¡Oye, vato!

On The Road Again: Bidding Farewell to The Vato

2008-07-11T15:15:00.004-06:00

Here we are, at the crossroads of history. For something like the three hundred twenty-third time in five years, my blog is moving, hopefully for good. The new address: http://joshhansen.net/

Weird. There's something strangely familiar about that domain name, but I can't quite put my finger on it....

You see, the recent economic downturn has hit the ¡Oye, vato! crew with unexpected severity. We've had to fire all the administrative staff, limit PR to Internet-only stuff, and cut the editorial department down to just one schmo with seniority. It's a dark time here at the office.

So, in order to economize and refocus the operation, we're combining forces with the folks over at the highly exclusive Ziggity Zam site to produce a new blog of epic proportions: monstropolitan. But yeah, the address is just joshhansen.net, the boringness of which required us to compensate with an exciting and incomprehensible name that sounds like some new Godzilla-flavored ice cream. What do we have to lose except our dignity?

Cutting through the pretenses, this new site allows me to combine my public blog (this one) with my family-only, private blog. Especially if they're my buddies or kinsmen, people who register and log in at this new site will get special privileges like access to posts I don't feel comfortable throwing out to the Internet in general ;-) But, for the most part, it's all public so you probably don't really have to bother.

I have, however, started putting up some of my poetry, and most of that will only be available to logged-in friends and family. (Like reading my poetry is really some great motivation to sign up!) I also plan to put up pages about school, research, and professional stuff. In that sense, joshhansen.net will be a lot like Josh Hansen: the online edition.

Hopefully I'll see you -- or, at the very least, you'll see me -- there.
P.S. All of the content (posts and comments) from this blog has been transferred over to the new one.

Today in the Life of Josh

2008-06-30T21:52:00.003-06:00

Awake a bit after noon, shocked to have slept so late. (Gotta set an alarm!)
Standard prepare-for-the-day stuff. (Pray, shower, read scriptures, eat breakfast (super late breakfast))
Walk to campus and give Nathaniel the tie that the Sister Sessions bought for us for Britten's wedding
Work in the lab -- debugging the regressions in the Language-ID system so I'm ready for my presentation on Thursday.
Walk home a bit after 7. Run in to Mary and chat with her on the way.
Eat a dinner of rice and veggies graciously provided by Mary, then go to Family Home Evening across the street at the intramural field.
Listen to Gabe's lesson on dealing with doubts (using Nickel Creek's "Doubting Thomas" song, which I liked)
Walk/run/sneak across town to Kiwanis park as we played "Fugitive". (When I played that at home in high school we called it Mission Impossible.) On the way I ran into two friends from my last ward. Chatting with them resulted in my capture at the hands of Barney and his evil accomplices, but catching up with friends is more important!
Come home and write this post

"Quoth the Raven"; Or, On the Demise of Schmoopsy-poo

2008-06-20T14:44:00.002-06:00

Well, I got back to Provo last night and one of the first things I did was run like a frightened child to the ever-loving side of my dear Jenny, or Schmoopsy-poo as I like to call her when my heart is most profusely gushing forth its unending affections towards her.

We had been divided by hundreds -- nay! thousands -- of miles, and the tendrils of enduring obsession binding our hearts together were stretched to the breaking point. And so it was no surprise that when we got together last night it seemed that the petals of our fiery flower of love had wilted like a corsage in a microwave. I mean, all she could do was talk about Neal Diamond. And I, for my part, just kept on raving about the ridiculousness of Notting Hill. The very air was poisoned against us and the love that once was, but is now condemned to be no more than a tormenting memory of mushy pet names and awkward photo shoots! So -- with mutual admiration, but unable to overcome the widening gulf rending our relationship in two -- we called it off.

Alas and wo unto us for that past promise of eternal ping-pong matches which now is not! Alas that Jenny-sweets no longer shall gaze into my eyes like a mosquito drawn towards a bug zapper! Alas that my keyboard now is short-circuited by my free-flowing tears!

And so I ask myself if ever the blissful days of yore shall return; if ever I shall dare to leap joyously with heals a-clicking over an oily puddle of rainwater; or if I will once more in this life chuckle at the wit of graffiti on an underpass wall. And then into my dimming mind echo the words I know so well: for thus quoth the Raven, "Nevermore!" And so, dear Jenny, farewell!

A Friend's Poem

2008-06-16T18:47:00.004-06:00

After about 5 years of separation from most of my earthly belongings, I finally went with my dad to his storage unit to pick up all of the old junk that I left behind when I went back to college after my mission. Well, it's really cool to go through this stuff after so much time has elapsed. I just looked in the writing anthology that my 7th grade language arts class produced, and decided this poem by my good friend Ben Wilson deserved to be transcribed:

Water Cycle
In the days of rain
the earth is dark
And skies are gray with sorrow,
but on the eve when
the sun breaks through
rejoice is on the morrow.

In the days of sun
the Earth is green
but soon becomes in vain,
For when plants go parched
and start to die
you wish for days of rain
--Ben Wilson

You know, it's not Nobel Prize material. But it's good, especially for a 7th-grader. Nice job, 7th Grade Ben!

Oh, Senators, Again!

2008-06-13T00:49:00.005-06:00

Related to my public outrage against the farm bill, the Swine Line lets us know what's been cooking on Capitol Hill as far as fiscal (ir)responsibility. Even the reform committees are adrift in bacon grease leaking out of those pork barrels!

The Epic of Zagmurf

2008-06-13T00:38:00.002-06:00

I went to Cheney to visit Susanna yesterday, and had a great time. After going out to lunch, she, Ben, and I all sat around watching me play World of Warcraft. I love games like that -- which is why I forbid myself from regularly playing them, because I can't seem to play in moderation. But, this just once wouldn't hurt, right? ;-)

Anyway, I created a character -- a night elf hunter, as a matter of fact. He was an mighty man, whose name, in the annals, was said to be Zagmurf. Yea, and in the first year of his hunting Zagmurf did slay many beasts of the forest: nasty spider things, and boars, and a rabbit. And Zagmurf waxed strong in the ways of questing, and he did level up.

But lo, Zagmurf's bow-hunting skills were wonderful great, even to exceed all in the realm of Shadowglen. Yea, he slew the beasts from afar, and their poison spraying upon him was like the soothing fall of rain on his skin. And in the second year of his hunting, Zagmurf did gain the Stalk Beasts skill, and received many a ruined pelt as his prize. Nevertheless, Zagmurf was a friend unto the beasts, slaying only that which was meet. And he was beloved of the woodland creatures.

Yet in the third year of his hunting, Zagmurf was afflicted with an strange ailment, and did linger on the threshold of death, even until the forest animals did howl and cry at the sickening of so mighty a man. And in the fourth year, Zagmurf gave up the ghost, and returned to crumble unto dust upon the earth. And in that very hour, a boar did break forth into song, singing:

"The mighty hunter, Zagmurf, is dead!
whose marvelous skill was exceeded only by his care.
May his bowstring spring ever-tight!
May his knife-blade glint ever-bright!
Though his body rot in the grave's earthy bed,
In our mem'ry he'll always be fair!"

And when the boar had sung his verse memorial, he was seen to shed a tear. Then stood forth a deer to speak honorful words over the corse of Zagmurf, saying:

"Behold, all ye who loved Zagmurf! and hark, though your fathers were slain by his bow! Here lieth a man in the glory of death. Yet better it were" -- and he paused, and with his mouth layed a wreath of ivy upon Zagmurf's cold brow -- "to remember the glory of life which he showed us."

And he kissed the man's face, though its aspect was funereal-somber. The deer then righted himself, and continued:

"Indeed, mayhap his love -- which was great -- shall be magnified in death, unto the gain of the living. Yea, haply his power -- which was fearsome -- shall not weaken with his flesh but shall invigorate us to yet nobler deeds of valor. And haply his heart -- which was great -- at his passing beat not its last beat, but its first unto our lasting welfare.

"So all hail Zagmurf! and all praise! For he was, verily, an mighty man!"

Thus fell Zagmurf, the mighty hunter, whose ways were the ways of the just. And he quested no more in the land of Shadowglen.

Pay-As-You-Drive?

2008-06-10T16:04:00.001-06:00

There is a proposal for Pay-As-You-Drive car insurance. Your insurance rate is per-mile, not per-6-month-term. This would decrease insurance rates of those who drive little (like yours truly) but raise them for those who drive long distances. It would of course motivate decreased driving, which is a good thing from the point of view of emissions, congestion, road maintenance, vehicle maintenance, etc. I support the idea, since it seems to cause more of the cost of an activity (driving) to be borne by those participating in the activity (drivers).

However, part of the rationale used in the proposal is rests on the assumption that people who drive more get into more accidents. This deserves consideration. Stated flatly like that I have no doubt it is true: the more you drive, the more exposure to the risk of driving you undergo, thus more accidents for longer drives. However, it's also possible/likely that people who drive a lot are, by virtue of larger experience, better drivers than those who drive very little. Additionally, people who drive the longest distances tend to do so on cross-country highways, not in cities. The risks of highway driving are different from stop-and-go city traffic.

So, while long drivers are likely responsible for more total accidents than short drivers, their rate of accidents per mile may be less. I suppose that this could be taken into account by insurance companies by charging a higher rate for the first 5 or 10 thousand miles driven, then gradually decreasing the per-mile rate up to a certain point thereafter.

Oh, Senators!

2008-06-06T19:39:00.004-06:00

"Senate" is a from Latin word basically meaning "old folks". You'd think with all of their combined years and experience they'd have learned something about discipline. Nope. Not a bit. Here's the lineup for that offense to intelligence, that fiscal outrage, the shameful farm bill. Go ahead, be ashamed of your duly elected representatives:

YEAs ---77
Akaka (D-HI) Alexander (R-TN) Allard (R-CO) Barrasso (R-WY) Baucus (D-MT) Bayh (D-IN) Bingaman (D-NM) Bond (R-MO) Boxer (D-CA) Brown (D-OH) Brownback (R-KS) Bunning (R-KY) Burr (R-NC) Cantwell (D-WA) Cardin (D-MD) Carper (D-DE) Casey (D-PA) Chambliss (R-GA) Cochran (R-MS) Coleman (R-MN) Conrad (D-ND) Corker (R-TN) Cornyn (R-TX) Craig (R-ID) Crapo (R-ID) Dodd (D-CT)	Dole (R-NC) Dorgan (D-ND) Durbin (D-IL) Enzi (R-WY) Feingold (D-WI) Feinstein (D-CA) Graham (R-SC) Grassley (R-IA) Harkin (D-IA) Hutchison (R-TX) Inhofe (R-OK) Inouye (D-HI) Isakson (R-GA) Johnson (D-SD) Kerry (D-MA) Klobuchar (D-MN) Kohl (D-WI) Landrieu (D-LA) Lautenberg (D-NJ) Leahy (D-VT) Levin (D-MI) Lieberman (ID-CT) Lincoln (D-AR) Martinez (R-FL) McCaskill (D-MO) McConnell (R-KY)	Menendez (D-NJ) Mikulski (D-MD) Murray (D-WA) Nelson (D-FL) Nelson (D-NE) Pryor (D-AR) Reid (D-NV) Roberts (R-KS) Rockefeller (D-WV) Salazar (D-CO) Sanders (I-VT) Schumer (D-NY) Sessions (R-AL) Shelby (R-AL) Smith (R-OR) Snowe (R-ME) Specter (R-PA) Stabenow (D-MI) Stevens (R-AK) Tester (D-MT) Thune (R-SD) Vitter (R-LA) Warner (R-VA) Wicker (R-MS) Wyden (D-OR)

NAYs ---15
Bennett (R-UT) Coburn (R-OK) Collins (R-ME) DeMint (R-SC) Domenici (R-NM)	Ensign (R-NV) Hagel (R-NE) Hatch (R-UT) Kyl (R-AZ) Lugar (R-IN)	Murkowski (R-AK) Reed (D-RI) Sununu (R-NH) Voinovich (R-OH) Whitehouse (D-RI)

Not Voting - 8
Biden (D-DE) Byrd (D-WV) Clinton (D-NY)	Gregg (R-NH) Kennedy (D-MA) McCain (R-AZ)	Obama (D-IL) Webb (D-VA)

No presidential candidate bothered to vote; all senators from my home state of Washington took the road more-traveled and voted Yea. It's called a farm bill for a good reason: it's 100% pork. This is why nobody can convince third-world nations to trade with us (or with Europe, for that matter) -- our farming is so heavily subsidized that they simply can't compete, and everybody is so entangled with the farm lobby that they can't imagine slashing that flood of money wasted making sure sugar farmers have big houses.

I don't know how I can convey my feelings aside from a bolded, italicized capitalized, huge version of the word DISGUSTING. This is the vomit of government. Please, at least have the courtesy to gag.

Mid-trip Report

2008-06-05T00:52:00.008-06:00

So I was just reading through my quasi-roommate Gabe Proulx's blog and I realized that I felt like blogging myself. I've been sitting here all night sort of bored yet engaged in writing a mysterious new piece of software which shall be known to you only as "Siegfried", but code-slavery just wasn't doing it. I've been inspired to make the shift back into the realm of natural languages.

I've been in Washington for a while. You know, that's where I grew up. I'm back in my sweet, sweet homeland of southeastern Washington State, and I find myself still in love with the place and its people.

The Trip
A week after arriving in Washington, I went with my sister and her family to California, which was really cool. I hadn't been to Disneyland since I was something like 8 years old, so going back was a significant return to childhood for me. I really liked it, and, as I have told a few people, I think that visits there early in my life are part of why I never cared much for any other amusement park I've been to: Disneyland is an amusement park the way an amusement park should be: It's clean. There are lots of drinking fountains. Smoking is minimal. Once you're in, you can go on any ride (no tickets required). They don't care if you take pictures of the photo previews they show at the end of a ride. The atmosphere is happy! Every ride is detailed and exciting, and seems like an attempt to let you experience something incredible that you have little chance of experiencing in real life, like space flight, or a pirate raid, or an Indiana Jones-style escape from a runaway boulder.

On the way home we drove through Northern California's redwoods, which were magnificent. We stopped on a beach and just walked around for a while. The ocean is freaky and mysterious, but I also find it soothing to simply be there and hear the waves and smell the clean air.

Confronting Fear
While we were at California Adventure I surprised myself by confronting my fears of heights (Soarin' Over California), upside-down rollercoasters (California Screamin'), and plummeting to likely death (Tower of Terror). For me this was a really big deal. I have always been such a scaredy-cat! No, seriously, a real wimp! Well, big, grown-up boy that I am, I was actually able to go on all of these rides that made me so nervous beforehand. It was like slaying an until-then undefeatable giant.

Maybe it's because I've seen and experienced some very scary things that I didn't know how to deal with, but I've noticed that my fears are always way out of proportion to actuality. My fears about the rides at California Adventure were that way -- none of them was even half as frightening an experience as I expected. It was also like that when I ended my over-long hiatus from meaningful dating early this year. Paralysis because I feared devastating heartbreak had to give way to actually trying and to actually caring in order for me to progress, but I was terrified! The seeming caprice of prior failures, the painful losses of invested emotion. It took some counsel from compassionate friends to help me to make the leap of faith. And it worked out. It wasn't so bad. It was a good experience.

Shrapnel Removal
Maybe more terrifying still was confronting one of my past interests in order to find out why exactly she had chosen not to pursue things. I didn't realize just how hard the ambiguity was for me until a friend discussed a similar situation. I then realized that that would continue gnawing at me until I had the guts to ask her why, to cut through the generalities which were meant to protect me but which were really like a piece of shrapnel festering under the scar-marked surface. It's a hard thing to walk up to somebody and demand that they perform an invasive shrapnel removal operation. But that's what I had to do.

When she acquiesced, it set me free somehow. It was wonderful! She gave me her real reasons for calling a halt to the relationship, and they conformed exactly to my earlier suspicions. It wasn't the knowledge of the reasons that made a difference, really. It was getting her to deal straight with me. It was having enough respect for myself to ask for an explanation. To stop telling myself to just ignore that dull, occasionally stabbing, pain underneath the old wound, but to let myself get that hunk of rusted old metal removed.

"You're Stronger Than You Think You Are"
An interesting observation resulting from staying at my sister's house: I think I actually could do the parenting thing. I know I've still only had to deal with a small portion of my niece's and my nephews' craziness, and yet I feel confident that, especially with some of the skills I've begun to learn while here, I could do it. That's a pretty encouraging thought!

A good friend of mine told me several times, "You're stronger than you think you are, Josh," and I think I've actually started to believe it. To believe that perhaps the long-raging fires of adversity have wrought something more than just pain within me. What if they really have tempered me, made me stronger?

The Other Trip
We're also mid-way through the year (or very nearly). I've really been blessed this year. All of these blessings -- including those resulting from this trip home -- I attribute to God's great kindness in my life.

Well, my eyes are drooping downward in sleep. Thanks for reading, and good night!
- Josh

Pip pip! Cheerio!

2008-03-13T23:28:00.005-06:00

Well, the Profile Picture Contest drew to a close with little fanfare on Saturday. And the winner received his prize of a box of brownie mix with even less fanfare in the bottom floor of the library next to my locker a few days ago! And the winner is:

"Sir Josh, Lord of Schmedbury" (my title) by David Hansen

The runner up:
"There Is No Try" (also my title) by Susanna Hansen

David is now the proud owner of a box of brownie mix. Susanna, sorry, I don't know if you get any prize aside from great glory and honor on the Internet. I took a picture of David in his moment of glory, but it was on his camera phone so he'll have to get the picture out to everyone.

I could probably be blamed for playing favorites, since it is two of my siblings who ended up with this lofty commendation. Well, blame away! But either way, I now have the coolest assortment of profile pictures ever!

Here's how I'm going to do things: as there were four contestants, I am going to use the next month to highlight their work by using one of their submissions as my facebook profile picture for a week. I'll go in this order: Mark, Clayton, Susanna, David.

By the way, did you notice that all of the contestants have last names ending in -son/-sen? Yeah, wacky. Sort of a homestar runner-ish thing, isn't it?

Here's a gallery of all of the submissions I received. Thanks everybody!

Mark Sanderson - Popsicle Collage

Clayton Anderson

David Hansen

Susanna Hansen

"That Evil May Be Done Away"

2008-03-06T13:25:00.006-07:00

The most recent issue of BYU Political Review is well worth reading. In particular, I suggest that you read Why Europe is Losing the Fight Against Trafficking, Technology and the Rise of Modern Slavery, and Adoption and Corruption in Guatemala.

Against Secret Combinations
"Secret combinations" is a term used by the Book of Mormon to describe conspiratorial organizations that seek to exploit human beings. These three articles in the Political Review seem to me to be describing an increase in activity that would fall under the "secret combination" categorization. This is quite significant, given this scriptural warning:

Wherefore, the Lord commandeth you, when ye shall see these things come among you that ye shall awake to a sense of your awful situation, because of this secret combination which shall be among you.... For it cometh to pass that whoso buildeth it up seeketh to overthrow the freedom of all lands, nations, and countries; and it bringeth to pass the destruction of all people, for it is built up by the devil, who is the father of all lies.... Wherefore, I, Moroni, am commanded to write these things that evil may be done away, and that the time may come that Satan may have no power upon the hearts of the children of men, but that they may be persuaded to do good continually, that they may come unto the fountain of all righteousness and be saved (Ether 8:24-26).

To accompany those readings, why don't we look at the 18th Chapter of the Revelation of John, with slight modifications:

And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven.... And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon/Los Angeles/Denver/Chicago/New York/Las Vegas/Miami the great is fallen.... And the politicians and consumers of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning, standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, "Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come."

And the salesmen and retailers of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more: The dollars and Euros, and blood diamonds, and of fancy wristwatches, and fine denim, and corduroy, and silk, and polyester, and all plastics, and all manner devices of silicon, and all manner devices of most precious memory chips, and of processors, and huge hard drives, and wireless capabilities; and perfumes, and colognes, and hand lotions, and bath beads; and soft drinks, and oil, and chocolate chip cookies, and Nutella, and beef, and chicken; and SUVs, and hybrid cars, and sweatshop laborers, and souls of men. And the foods that thy soul lusted after are departed from thee, and all things which were sugary and fattening are departed from thee, and thou shalt find them no more at all.

The manufacturers and salesmen of these things, which were made rich by her, shall stand afar off for the fear of her torment, weeping and wailing, and saying, "Alas, alas, that great city, that was clothed in fine denim, and corduroy, and polyester, and decked with credit cards, and precious cell phones, and jewelry! For in one hour so great riches is come to nought."

And every truck driver, and all the UPS fleet, and pilots, and as many as trade by interstate or by air, stood afar off, and cried when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, "What city is like unto this great city!" And they cast dust on their heads, and cried, weeping and wailing, saying, "Alas, alas, that great city, wherein were made rich all that had trucks on the highway and planes in the air by reason of her high cost of living! for in one hour is she made desolate."

Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets; for God hath avenged you on her.... And the voice of pop artists, and rappers, and the music of guitarists, and drummers, shall be heard no more at all in thee; and no employee, of whatsoever work he does, shall be found any more in thee; and the sound of a lawnmower shall be heard no more at all in thee; and the light of a street lamp shall shine no more at all in thee; and the voice of the boyfriend and of the girlfriend shall be heard no more at all in thee: for thy CEO's and senators, gang leaders and governors were the great men of the earth; for by their advertisements and propaganda were all nations deceived. And in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth.

Profile Picture Contest - Extended!

2008-03-01T22:24:00.009-07:00

Well, all of you avid contest-followers out there have realized that the deadline for the profile picture mega-competition has passed. Well, I sort of forgot about it. Because of that, I'm going to do something unprecedented: I'm extending the deadline for a whole week and a day. The contest is now over at the end of Saturday, March 8, 2008. Ah, but I didn't forget to buy the brownie mix :-)

Ah, but do not smugly believe that you can wait until the last day to slap together some entry and win! Oh no, 'tis not so! Here are the entries I've received so far. These are the ones to beat. Scour Facebook, beg your friends, draw your own. Go for it!

Mark Sanderson - Popsicle Collage
Unfortunately, this entry has been disqualified... because I made it! This is a collage I put together back when I was living with these guys at Moon Apartments.

Clayton Anderson

David Hansen

The Endorsement You've All Been Waiting For!

2008-02-16T13:35:00.008-07:00

Endorsements, endorsements, endorsements! Everybody's getting into the endorsement business these days: Romney just endorsed McCain[1], Oprah's all for Obama[2], Bill Clinton endorsed Hillary Clinton[3], and my sources tell me even Oscar the Grouch is on the verge of endorsing somebody![4]

So what the heck, why not jump into the fray and endorse somebody myself? I've got all the right qualifications of former enemy-ship, pop culture cred, has-been status, and dumpster dwelling. So, who's it gonna be? Huh? Huh?

Well, just read the press release:

THE INTERNET. Feb. 12, 2008. After much speculation about which candidate would receive his support, irrelevant blogging personality and unemployed college graduate Josh Hansen unveiled his endorsement for President of the United States in 2008.

"After much deliberation and several late-night pizza runs, I am granting my weighty endorsement to Senator Barack Obama of Illinois," he announced at the press conference to a few cheers and scattered applause. "In addition to his undisputed status as the feel-good candidate, the senator shares many of my specific policy objectives, which I will now outline to you."

Hansen -- a well-known opponent of free markets, free trade, and prosperity -- cited Obama's love of factory jobs[5][Q1], profligate spending habits[6], and paternalistic policies[Q2][Q3] as factors. "The rise of high tech and the decline of unskilled labor, the abundance of educational opportunities for all citizens, and the unprecedented economic expansion that Americans have suffered in the last twenty years are unacceptable, and 'we, the people' have had enough," Mr. Hansen cried to an audience of reporters, politicos, and muppets. "They've shut our factories down, and who for, what for? For Google, that's who. For cheaper manufactured goods, that's what."

He elaborated his hopes with a further lament: "Senator Obama's thorough repudiation of free trade is our only hope of returning to blue collar bliss. The 'paradise lost' of strangled productivity must be regained." Warning against claims that disruptive economic adjustments in the short-run would lead to greater long-term prosperity[7], Hansen reminded listeners of the importance of living "for the moment. Looking too far into the future is the great danger of our time. Foresight never helped anyone to eat a doughnut in the here and now."

Mr. Hansen added his support for irresponsibility in Iraq. "I fear that our glorious defeat in Vietnam is being forgotten. The legacy of defeat must not be abandoned; only an abdication of responsibility in Iraq can prove that America's foreign policy a consistent one of aborted intervention." He also admitted his amusement at the thought of Iraqis "duking it out" in a post-bailout free-for-all.

Rising to his greatest height of oratory elegance, the ex-student urged the faithful onward. "The 'better angels of our nature'[8] resonate with Senator Obama's cry of protectionism, paternalism, and defeatism. It is a glorious message of hope in the face of progress, security in place of opportunity, and surrender when confronted with the threat victory. Turn not back from the noble cause, but fight on, for great shall be our victory!"

Photos come from references [1], [2], [3], and [4].

References
[1] Romney Endorses McCain - Capital News 9
[2] Oprah in Des Moines - The New York Times Politics Blog
[3] The Shamelessness of Bill and Hillary Clinton - Telegraph.co.uk
[4] Oscar the Grouch - Muppet Wiki
[5] Barack Ob a ma's Feb. 12 Speech - New York Times
[6] Candidates' Earmarks Worth Millions - washingtonpost.com
[7] Commanding Heights: Lawrence Summers on PBS, The Importance of NAFTA - PBS
[8] Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address - WikiSource

Quotations
These excerpts are by Barack Obama and come from a blog post carried by his website: Obama's Economic Policy Address at the Janesville GM Assembly Plant.

[Q1] It’s a Washington where decades of trade deals like NAFTA and China have been signed with plenty of protections for corporations and their profits, but none for our environment or our workers who’ve seen factories shut their doors and millions of jobs disappear; workers whose right to organize and unionize has been under assault for the last eight years.

[Q2] A few weeks ago I offered an economic stimulus package based on a simple principle – we should get immediate relief into the hands of people who need it the most and will spend it the quickest. I proposed sending each working family a $500 tax cut and each senior a $250 supplement to their Social Security check. And if the economy gets worse, we should double those amounts.
Neither George Bush nor Hillary Clinton had that kind of immediate, broad-based relief in their original stimulus proposals, but I’m glad that the stimulus package that was recently passed by Congress does. We still need to go further, though, and make unemployment insurance available for a longer period of time and for more Americans who find themselves out of work. We should also provide assistance to state and local governments so that they don’t slash critical services like health care or education.

[Q3] [We would] help those who are facing closure refinance their mortgages so they can stay in their homes. And I’d provide struggling homeowners relief by offering a tax credit to low- and middle-income Americans that would cover ten percent of their mortgage interest payment every year.

Being Postsuppositional

2008-02-16T01:27:00.002-07:00

My thinking has started along many of these lines before, but I never followed them through to a proper conclusion as this logical/philosophical analysis does. I didn't read every word (it's pretty hefty) but what I did read was quite striking.

Josh Hansen Profile Picture Mega-Competition 2008! (Updated 1)

2008-02-15T12:28:00.007-07:00

I've arrived at the pinnacle of vanity, and now, as a rite of passage, I must hold a profile picture competition. I've had some pretty sweet profile pictures in the past, if I do say so myself (and I think I just did.) I know you've all been hording pictures of Josh Hansen for ages; now it's time to dust off the photo albums, get those pages from your scrapbook, and scour your computer for the best of the best.

With that preamble, I hereby proclaim the much-anticipated

Josh Hansen Profile Picture Mega-Competition 2008!
Which, of course, was not anticipated by anybody, ever!

The idea: Gather up your photos of me, use your imagination, photoshop, oil paints, whatever -- and crank out the awesomest picture for Josh Hansen to use on his Facebook profile.

The rules:

Your submission must somehow use a picture of me (Josh Hansen) or some recognizable reproduction thereof (drawings, sculptures, sock puppets, etc.) and must be usable as a profile picture on Facebook.
It mustn't be offensive, according to me.
I have to like it. (In case that wasn't already obvious.)

Submissions: Email images to me. If you don't know my email address or how to get it, then you probably shouldn't be entering ;-)

Deadline: February 29th at 11:59:59 pm.

THE PRIZE: A box of brownie mix with a bow on it. I'm too lazy to cook the brownies for you, sorry. But this way you can have brownies whenever you want!

Prior Profile Pics
Here are all of my past profile pictures, which you are welcome to use as source material:

Valentine - 16 December 2006. Frame and caption by Mark Sanderson.

Profile Profile - 9 February 2007. Photo by Britten Sessions.

On The Seine - 9 June 2007. Photo by Grace/Charlotte/Tommy/Molly.

On The Seine - Wide Angle - 9 June 2007. Photo by Grace/Charlotte/Tommy/Molly.

Gawking At Paris - 30 August 2007. Photo by Grace/Charlotte/Tommy/Molly.

Disturbing - 5 November 2007. (This is the one that my friends in Russian 201 put up for me. If you try photoshopping my face onto this creepy guy's body, you will lose! Though it might still be worth doing for humor's sake.)

Attack - Black Background - 5 November 2007. Photo by Sam Lasley.

Attack - White Background - 5 November 2007. Photo by Sam Lasley.

Guitongue - 7 January 2008. (My current picture). Photo by my niece? My nephew?

For those of you who have made it this far, it's worth observing the disproportionate number of photos in which I am wearing some kind of vest. Interesting....

Update 1: Added PRIZE information!

Flags

2008-02-15T12:19:00.000-07:00

And a harsh foreign policy view by means of color-coded flags.

It Cuts Deep

2008-02-15T12:04:00.002-07:00

Mwa ha ha, you fools! You thought it mattered who gets elected this fall! Oh that's funny!

Okay, so it does matter. A lot. But some things are likely to stay the same. From foreignpolicy.com's "Passport" blog.

Driven by Cruelty

2008-02-08T00:32:00.000-07:00

Strange how a nation whose people pride themselves so much in fair treatment of each individual can be so driven by cruelty against those they refuse to understand. Here's an honest assessment by the Wall Street Journal: Mormons Dismayed by Harsh Spotlight.

Immigration's Economic Key

2008-01-29T00:33:00.000-07:00

Problems With the Romney Plan
Mitt Romney's plan to end illegal immigration worries me. In particular, this point bodes ill for the economy:

Encourage Legal Immigration. Streamline the system to recruit and retain skilled workers and welcome the best and the brightest from around the world to our universities.

To begin with, we already get "the best and brightest from around the world" in our universities. Some countries suffer from substantial "brain drain" that largely goes to the United States. Also, I support the idea of making the legal immigration system work. The big question is, Who decides how many people from where get to come?

But the real problem I see here is two-fold. First, it is not only skilled but also unskilled labor that is in demand. Second, who decides what makes somebody skilled? Which skills are useful? The freewheeling illegal immigration that has been occurring lets the market determine the answer to that. Any other system is likely to suffer from attempts at micromanaging the economy -- a sort of outward-looking central planning system. Think of it as the Soviet Union take on immigration. Great.

Key Economics
The crux of the matter is the ability of illegal workers to undercut citizens/nationals by working for less than minimum wage. If we remove this ability by tighter border enforcement, active prosecution of employers who pay unlawfully low wages, and easier legal entry to help document and track those who come in to the country, then I believe we would have the following results:

Lower-class citizens/nationals would be better able to compete for jobs in the lowest wage range.
Increased prices of consumer goods due to higher labor costs for employers.
Decreased employment overall, but, at least initially, a higher proportion of those employed will be citizens/nationals, and those employed will be paid at least minimum wage.

If we as a nation decide that that is a desirable combination of outcomes, then let's do it.

Dance Party

2008-01-12T23:33:00.000-07:00

I went to a dance party tonight. It was almost against my will - I figured I would probably end up going, but when the time came I didn't really feel like leaving the apartment. But, I had told some of the girls from the hosting apartment that I would see them there, so I felt like I needed to.

Well, it was fun! Back in high school and my freshman year of college I was a pretty enthusiastic dancer, but I've sort of lost the taste for it or something lately. But it's really that I don't have as much energy as I used to, since many times when I actually get around to dancing I remember that I like it. It's fun to move to the music and it's something that I naturally like to do -- unless there are people around. Then I have to overcome a bit of self-consciousness.

Crosswalk

2008-01-12T23:29:00.000-07:00

I was walking home from the library. As I was nearing crosswalk, a guy coming the other direction pushed the crossing button for me just in time for it to turn green as I arrived. I said thanks and went happily on home. It put a smile on my face. So push the button for the unsuspecting pedestrians in your life :-)

'Bourne Ultimatum' and the Rule of Law in a Republic

2007-12-26T01:31:00.000-07:00

Just watched The Bourne Ultimatum with my sister and my bro-in-law. Cool movie, very well done! Of course, amidst the excellent action, its philosophical point wasn't wasted on me. I don't know if the original book was really about this, but it was a timely statement on the tension between security and liberty.

A Tale of Two Extremisms
One of the great challenges of our time is the defense of liberty against extremist threats, while balancing abuses resulting from too many resources and too little oversight in the instruments created or adapted for that fight. Or rather, the challenge is to defend liberty against multiple threats, multiple extremisms:

extremism abroad (external risk) such as radical Islam that seeks to destroy our precious free institutions by means of terrorism and other subversive methods
extremism at home (internal risk) in the form of overzealousness in battling the first form of extremism.

The Nature of the Evils of Internal and External Risks to Liberty
A useful assertion to make and then analyze is that likelihood or severity of external risks to liberty is inversely proportional to the amount of resources employed in their prevention and directly proportional to the amount of oversight committed to this resources. External risks are greatest when oversight is burdensome and resources are inadequate:

Likewise, the likelihood or severity of internal risks to liberty could be said to be directly proportional to the quantity of resources employed in prevention of external risks, and inversely proportional to the degree of oversight committed to those resources. Internal risks are greatest when too many resources are in the hands of people whose activities are insufficiently monitored:

Internal and external risks can be combined to create a hybrid pseudo-metric:

The obvious story of this chart is that too great of an imbalance of resources or oversight in either direction creates a risk that liberties will be lost. (Note that in all of these charts, the colored section is equal to log of the corresponding value in the non-colored scale. This was to make it easy to apply a color scheme.)

Summary
I'm in favor of normalizing the civil liberties regime during this conflict against external extremism. That means no holding of prisoners without trials. The key reason this is critical now when it wasn't necessarily so during the civil war, for example, is that terrorism will never go away. If we let it, it will become the perpetual wars from 1984 or the state of emergency of Caesar and Emperor Palpatine alike: a constant justification for shafting liberty.

We clearly can't abandon intelligence-gathering efforts. These must be effective. But at the moment our oversight of those efforts is probably too low. We need to devise a system by which a significant number of eyes outside of the intelligence community knows what those folks are up to and has a reasonable means of lodging complaints against abuses.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Faith in America

2007-12-08T21:15:00.000-07:00

I just watched Mitt Romney's speech on "Faith in America" and was quite impressed. I was impressed how he framed his ideas in terms of the moral foundation of the Declaration of Independence - much as Lincoln framed his arguments against slavery not in any formalism in the Constitution, but on the Declaration. I was impressed by his bold declaration of belief in his Mormon faith, and his unwillingness to reduce that faith to mere "tradition." I was impressed by his articulation of religion as a dynamic force in American public life, his interpretation of constitutionally-established religious freedom as neither a religion of secularism nor an endorsement of any one particular religion. He did this in a manner much clearer and more inspiring than I've ever seen before. While I remain decidedly undecided as far as which candidate to support for president next year, I will certainly consider this.

Standing Against the Tide

2007-11-14T15:24:00.000-07:00

[I'm not going to cite sources. I'm just going to give my thoughts.]

Many people believe that the United States should execute a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq. I disagree. Indeed, I think that's one of the dumbest things I've ever heard!

The Wrong Time to Withdraw
There's little debate about whether our reasons for going into Iraq were flawed. I agree, we shouldn't have gone in. But we're there, that decision was made years ago, and we need to find the best path forward from where we are. And now, right as Iraq is on the upswing, right as Sunnis in many provinces are joining the fight against extremists, right as Iraqi and U.S. casualties are doing a nose-dive, to withdraw in an instant and send Iraq back into the chaos they are just now escaping would be a crime, a sin.

The Wrong Reasons for Withdrawal
The chorus crying out for a quick and supposedly-painless withdrawal is simply the common position nowadays. I don't blame those who are part of that tide, as there largely appears to be no reasonable alternative. Once anti-war furor gets stoked, the rage of the populace is hard to resist. This isn't helped by the perceived and real incompetence of some who support the continuation of the war. The two sides of the false dichotomy seem to be 1) get out now, and 2) slog on eternally waging a war on behalf of sectarian parties. Most people don't know that in the year since the voters rebuked Republican leadership for its handling of the war, a third option has silently been made possible. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, competent handling of not just military but also social and economic issues by the likes of General Petraeus, in addition to the benefits of the force surge, have made plausible 3) a gradual withdrawal as Iraq stabilizes and progressively assumes more of its own affairs, until American military presence is either minimal or zero.This is clearly the ideal. For now we need to stay, but we need to be smart about what we do while we're there.

So to those of you who wish us to get out of Iraq ASAP, be careful that you are not playing into the hands of leaders wishing to politicize our remaining involvement in Iraq for purposes of their own political power.

Precipitous withdrawal suffers from utter disregard for the value of the lives of Iraqis. In the name of saving American lives and treasure, some are willing to sacrifice the lives, treasure, and future of an entire people. And we a nation whose freedom was forged by "Lives, ... Fortunes, and ... sacred Honor" willingly spilt to gain it.

Is it honestly right to -- having barged in and stirred up all sorts of violence and bloodshed in Iraq -- simply take off while things are still in worse shape than we found them in? It's like crashing a party, throwing all of the pizza out the window and smashing all of the drinks onto the floor, then saying, "Hey guys, I just got a text saying I need to go home" and stepping out the front door with a smile and a wave, leaving devastation in your wake.

Do Unto Others...
I believe firmly that we as a people will be held accountable for how we treat other peoples. Fleeing Iraq because the only skin we're thinking about is our own would be heinous negligence. This is my opinion, and here I stand, against the tide.

A Return to Blogism

2007-11-14T00:12:00.000-07:00

My good friend Michelle pointed out with disappointment that I hadn't posted anything to my blog for months. I made her what I hoped wouldn't become a hollow promise: to post, or, in other words, to return to blogism. Well, Michelle, here it is.

The Past
I've been spending a lot of time lately transcribing my journal from my freshman year here at BYU. Some people think it's depressing to read old journals, and I admit that from time to time I do find that to be the case, especially if I'm really dissatisfied with the now. But in recent weeks it's been a very positive experience. Check out this long sequence (with some editing):

Saturday, October 6, 2001
General Conference!

Ben and Brandon came to Utah this weekend for General Conference, among other things. They had an extra ticket for the afternoon session, and their uncle Harold had an extra standby ticket for Priesthood session. So we got to go to both!

Waiting in line before the afternoon session, we met a girl from Pleasant Grove named Charlotte.... Anyway, we talked and after the afternoon session we ate dinner at a little diner on North Temple called Dee's. We laughed, we had fun - those precious human interactions that are both impossible and meaningless to quantify. Charlotte summed it up when she said, “You know, it feels like I've known you guys for years.” It's a pretty cliché line, but I totally agreed with her – it seemed like we were already friends, even before we met.

Before Charlotte left and we went to priesthood meeting, I got her phone number and cellphone number. Here's the final twist to the story: ... five minutes after meeting Charlotte, I just had this feeling that I should ask her to the Homecoming dance.

Tuesday, October 16, 2001

Quick update:

I asked Charlotte to Homecoming, which will be Friday night. Very stressful figuring this all out, but it will be fun.

I've been running with Michelle on Tuesday and Thursday nights. Tonight we were running on the track by the stadium and she told me about this guy who Christie is interested in. He is 25 and he's moving way too fast with Christie....

Friday, October 19, 2001

Tonight I went to Homecoming with Charlotte. First, I had to get some things done at school and otherwise, though. This morning I woke up later than I had planned, but I still wanted to take my Physical Science test before the American Heritage lab.
Charlotte was supposed to pick me up at 6:30, and Dan and Michelle, too. (On my recommendation, Dan asked Michelle to go to the dance with him.)

Charlotte ended up being about an hour late because I gave her 1460 N as our street instead of 1430 N. By the time we got to Macaroni Grill for dinner our reservations were long overdue, so we had about a 40 minute wait to be seated. In the meantime, the four of us walked around a little shopping center outdoors. Charlotte graciously blocked my view of “Victoria's Secret” as we walked past it. We meandered around Border's (a bookstore) for a while, then headed back to the restaurant just in time to be seated.

Our table was near a gas fireplace that was burning just enough to keep gas from building up around it. We could still smell the burner gas though.

On our paper table covering I drew in crayon a picture of a sun rising against a bold blue sky. In the bottom I wrote “Charlotte is my sunshine!” Of course, Charlotte had already written my full name in beautiful lettering on her portion of the paper. We cut our respective works of art out with my picket knife scissors and gave them to each other. (I left mine in the car though. I'll have to get that for her....)

After a delicious dinner, on, on to the dance! A crazy trip south on I-15 brought us to the Chillon Reception Center in Spanish Fork. We escorted our dates in the cool, gusty night to a large stone or brick building.

OK, pause. One thing I really noticed tonight was that because it was cold, when Charlotte hooked her elbow in mine it was like she cuddled in for warmth. When girls do that, and they cling to your elbow like you're a protector of sorts, it makes me so excited! It's amazing how awesome it makes you feel!

At the dance, Charlotte and I tried competing in the swing dance competition. We began dancing (quite well, in my opinion) but when the DJ started calling out couples' numbers we got confused as we didn't have one. So we weren't really that much in contention, but we had a great time – the swing music was very refreshing.

One time while we were dancing, I told Charlotte about my fears that she'd think I was stalking her when I called to ask her to Homecoming after just meeting her. She responded by saying that she didn't have to give me her phone number – that was optional. Good point!
After that dance – and some many great slow dances along with it – we rode home and said goodbye. Goodbye hug. Now a few hours later here I am.
I had an awesome night! I'm pretty sure Charlotte did too! Yeah! Woohoo! Victory! She had fun!

Saturday, October 20, 2001

Due to going to bed very late lats night, I didn't wake up until 11:30. That left me and everyone else in our apartment 2.5 hours to get ready for cleaning inspection. I was quite surprised how clean this place can really be if we work at it a little bit!
OK, the real exciting part of my evening was when I got home at around 9 o'clock I quickly got a message saying that Charlotte called. I called Charlotte and, after “Hello, how're you doing?” etc. she told me that the reason she called was to say “thanks” for last night. I said, “Oh, it was totally my pleasure. I'm glad to hear you had a good time!”

I also told Charlotte that I left the paper she gave me at the restaurant in her car and would like to get it from her – a convenient excuse for us to have to get together sometime, I say!

I really enjoyed talking to Charlotte tonight and look forward to seeing her again.

On the other hand, I need to be particularly careful not to get too serious with any girls before my mission.

Well, I'm off to bed!

Wow, I was bold! Nowadays I'm waaaay more hesitant to do crazy things like ask girls in lines on dates. Darn hard life experience has lowered my expectations for such craziness, which is a shame, as it seems like we really had a great time.

The Present
I recently started a poem that I want to share:

Dialectic
Behold the brilliant vista,
A world before us lays
Enswirled all by mist, a-
wash with golden rays.

Why weep ye now upon this sight?
You can't believe what see your eyes?
But it's here, it's real, it's true, it's bright!

I see naught but clouds below.
There is sunshine, but as well there's rain.
It's not that I refuse to know
The good; but that I've seen much pain.

But in spite of having seen much more,
Now I see much less than I could see before
And it chills me to the very core.

Light and dark:
They call, they know our names.
We cannot only to one hark
For our path will lead both ways.

Ah but what a sin you've found,
Such gloominess as you think on!
Turn your head up. Do not look down,
And soon your gloom will all be gone.

Think not of evil -- it is wrong.
Think not sad thoughts -- life's a song!
Think not -- or hearts will ache too long.

Naive - you don't understand.
In fact, I would say you're slightly blind,
You insolent, odious man,
For you think not of the mind!

It has full well the pow'r to crush you.
When you need to speak, it can quickly hush you.
To fight it is to watch it mush you.

To the friends at bitter odds
Then came another soul
Though by which lonely path he trod
We do not - cannot? - know.

He brought goodness, he spoke peace,
(Somehow knowing what our friends did seek,
But of which they never did speak),

saying

Peace is truth, goodness is real,
Not naively, but in actual fact.
It's obscured by the things that you feel,
'Times obstructed by the way that you act.

Thus you wander about in a cloud
Through your life as with a burial shroud,
But your goal will never be found.

Obviously the discussion amongst the friends and the inexplicably wise stranger is not complete, because the stranger has only barely introduced some of the themes of his position without really explaining it. There would have to be some exchange between him and the other two before a resolution could be brought about. Sadly, knowing my tendencies of starting and then abandoning poems, I don't really expect to see that happen. But the poem has already served its purpose of helping me to think through conflicting views of life -- both of which I have subscribed to at various points in my life, and both of which are clearly not optimal: the blindly optimistic view because it can't help anybody, the more pessimistic because it ignores great joy that really is to be found.

Oh, my sister recently introduced me to something that should be indispensable for anybody somewhat inclined to bookishness like myself: Shelfari.

The Future
I have one more month of school before graduating with a B.A. in Linguistics, and I'm terrified of facing The Real World once more.

Terrified? Not so much, actually. I was terrified. That was before I "just happened" to get some interesting ideas. They could be summarized as code, quill, and casa.

Code
Google recently announced the Android Developer Challenge, a contest for good new applications developed for their Android mobile phone platform. Entries for the first round are accepted from January 2 to March 3, 2008, which is right when I start to have nothing to do because of graduating and as yet having no job. It also so happens that the work I've been doing for Dr. Ringger in the NLP Lab for the past several months has almost all been in Java -- the primary language for Android development. Thus the relevant skills are very fresh at the top of my toolkit. And, once more, it just so happens that I've had an idea for a feature for mobile phones bouncing around in my head for almost the past year. Hmm....

Quill
I love to write. I think writing should be a part of my future. I've been getting lots of practice in the past year, and I'm getting to the point where I really just want to sit down and write a novel. You know, put in a couple of hours a day brainstorming, outlining, writing, revising. When will there be a better time in my life? I have no dependents, I have the luxury of doing so, why don't I just give it a shot?

Casa (Or maybe a better word is pueblo?)
I feel like I need to go home. This feeling came shortly before my older sister offered to let me stay at her house in Washington. So starting sometime after my rental agreement ends at the end of April, I'm going to do just that. I don't know if I'll ever return to Provo. I mean, I might, but I just as likely might not. Yikes! I've been living here for six years and have come to be very comfortable. But, at the very least for a few months, it's time to be home. And I'm such a romantic with regards to patria, my homeland. I really, really love it there -- there's something in me that only feels whole at home. I miss the wind, the smells, just those indescribable things that you would only fall in love with if you lived the first 18 years of your life there.

The End
No, not of my life, just of this post :-) It's been quite a grab-bag, eh? And there's so much more to think and write and say and do!

My life is quite good right now, and I can only say that it is such only as I really seek to do what I know the Lord would have me do. It's the seeming paradox of obedience: that as we voluntarily shift our activities from what we are naturally inclined to do, to what God wants us to do, we seem to be more able than ever to do the things that we really want to do. No, it's not always simple; but in being real the gospel of Christ naturally exhibits all of the complexities of the real world, and likewise turns out to have overriding patterns and principles that are very powerful.

'Tis true.

Followup Links

2007-07-17T15:29:00.000-06:00

These links seem relevant to my previous post:

Myths and Realities of the George Bush Presidency
Incumbent Politicians vs. The Long Tail [Very interesting initial analysis, though he goes a bit weird with the Virtual Federalism thing]
The World Has Changed, Why Won't the Fund and the Bank? [On the relevance of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund]

Ron Paul: From Terrible Ideas to Bad Ideas AND Searching for a Philosopher King?

2007-07-17T14:25:00.000-06:00

VS? VS?

After last night reading two disheartening Washington Post articles about the Vice President's twisted policies, I was interested to learn about Ron Paul. I thought I remembered someone I know mentioning him as a favorite when he watched the debates, so could Mr. Paul be the Messiah candidate who will come to save the Republican party?

Sadly...
I'm afraid the answer is no. At least, that's my view. As we know from the New Testament, one person's expectations of a Messiah can be quite different from someone else's. But to me, he would represent a step backward from the ideal. In some ways, maybe not as far backward as currently, but in other ways certainly more so.

Here's a summary of his platform from his most recent blog post on the official Ron Paul website:

I talked about all our ideas: marching out of Iraq just as we marched in; no more meddling in the Middle East; bringing the troops home, from hundreds of expensive bases all over the world, so that we could have the money we need for the transition to freedom in social programs, and to abolish the personal income tax and the IRS. They are not compatible with a free society.

In a Ron Paul administration, we would also repeal the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act, restore habeas corpus and stop the spying on Americans. No more eavesdropping on our emails and bank accounts, our phone calls, home and businesses. No national ID—just the bracing freedom of the Constitution.

We must have sound money, and not a giant counterfeiting machine called the Federal Reserve that causes recessions and inflation. We must have private property rights, with no pollution or other attacks on property. We should enforce the Second Amendment, and all the Bill of Rights. We can have privacy for us, not secrecy for a corrupt bureaucracy.

It is all within our grasp, the restoration of the republic and our sovereignty—no UN, no North American Union, no Nafta, no WTO, no World Bank, no IMF. Just federalism, free enterprise, peace, prosperity, and the kind of future we all want for our families, ourselves, and our fellow Americans.

The dream can be a reality. You can help make it so. ... Instead of wars and inflation and spying and poverty, we can have peace and freedom and the blessings for our children and grandchildren of doing better than we have, of secure retirements and childhoods. No more theft—of our savings or our liberty.

A Tiny Parcel of Common Ground and The Death of Free Trade
Some of these things sound great. I'm all for privacy. After learning enough about the abuses of various totalitarian governments, it's clear that the dangers of not protecting the privacy of individuals are quite substantial. I'm all for treating prisoners in accordance with the Geneva Convention -- that means the CIA must come into line as well as the military. I'm a "no entangling alliances" kind of guy in many ways, but frankly the congressman's desire for free enterprise and prosperity is in some ways at odds with his will to abandon the WTO.

And, bailing out on the IMF surely won't bring financial solvency to the Third World nations that are helped back onto their feet through its loan program. Of course these organizations suffer from corruption and mismanagement, but they also seem to have some legitimate functions such as reducing trade barriers and enabling governments to move their populations out of poverty. Perhaps we should reform rather than abolish.

Can people not understand that the lowering of trade barriers as enshrined in the WTO is one of the great sources of our present prosperity? Yes, even globalization (the 'g' word, I know) is part of our current success. Not only that, but it helps bring greater prosperity to people around the world.

Other Bad Ideas: The Gold Standard?
Additional atrocities of policy include abandoning Iraq all at once. Throw in the closure of other bases around the world and all of a sudden a picture of self-centered isolationism emerges. Let's just enjoy our prosperity, keep it all to ourselves. Another component seems to be the dismantling of the federal reserve. WHY? Should people barter in goods and services when there's no longer anybody regulating the value of the dollar? Are we going to switch back to the gold standard? Check this from The Daily Paul:

Question: You support returning the country’s currency back to the gold standard. Is that correct?
Ron Paul: Not exactly. I’m for supporting the Constitution, and the Constitution still says only gold and silver can be legal tender. … The reasons I don’t like to say "go back" is because there were shortcomings in the original gold standard. What I reject, and the founders totally rejected, was a paper standard - creating money out of thin air. Spending money you don’t have. Printing it up. Causing inflation. Causing bubbles. Causing recessions. And wiping out the middle class. The middle class is getting poorer as the wealthy class is getting wealthier. [The advertisement for "The Federal Reserve: Fraud of the Century" at the top of the page sort of scares me. Upon the back of this "fraud" is built an innovative, lively economy. Dear Google, your 172 billion dollars of market capitalization are "fraudulent," so look out!]

Okay buddy, you go find the political will and the budget to purchase 600 or 700 billion dollars worth of gold to back the currency. Please, could every politician and presidential candidate take Economics 110 from Dr. Kearl? Some things, like gold, have inherent value due to their scarcity. Other things, like the dollar, have a value because society has agreed that it can be used in exchange. Really, in some ways it's more secure to let the value of the dollar float. What if it was pinned to the value of gold, and suddenly a vast gold deposit was discovered in the middle of, say, Oklahoma? The value of gold would drop in proportion to the size of the deposit, causing a sudden inflation of the dollar as its purchasing power diminishes. And, wiping out the middle class? I don't know about you, but I'm still feeling pretty alive. Yes, the rich get richer, but in addition, the middle class are very often becoming part of the rich. I guess if you wipe out the middle class by making it too prosperous that's not terrible.

Mr. Paul should also remember that price fluctuations and economic bubbles were definitely a reality of the American economy under the gold standard. Here's a friendly chart from Wikipedia.

Please Don't Go Down That Road
The man's interpretation of the constitution is simply too strict. If he wishes to restrict our currency to gold and silver, then I suppose debit cards and checks won't do? Most of the "money" in circulation in the country, perhaps even in the world, is not cash or even necessarily linked to cash. Loans from the federal reserve and between banks, personal checks, etc., allow our economy have a 6 trillion dollar volume when we actually have less than one trillion dollars in physical currency circulating. I'm glad that our economy is flexible enough to prosper! I suppose I put a little bit too much confidence and trust in our economy. The other evil is failing to understand it, trying to fix what "ain't broke," and thus seeking salvation from an unknown danger (is our economy faltering?) by means that will likely cause serious damage.

Abolition of personal income tax and the IRS: How will the activities of the government be financed? Who will collect taxes? Besides, the constitution as currently amended specifically authorizes Congress to levy an income tax. How is this incompatible with a free society? Of course, I do think some radical reform of tax laws might be in order. But we still need to have tax laws. As much as people despise paying taxes, it seems to keep the lights on, the universities funded, and the troops more or less equipped. I'm okay with that.

That Lot of Clowns, That Menagerie...
So I've ripped into Ron Paul pretty heavily here. I'm sorry for the violence, but it helps me to see where I stand with regards to at least one member of the coming wave of presidential contenders. You know, maybe I'll make a series of it. I'll do an analysis of all of the candidates one by one, so that by November 2008 I'll know whose policies I can find enough agreement with to vote for. So far, I'm seeing nobody that I could really feel 100% or even 90% good about. But, maybe I just don't know their platforms well enough. So maybe I'll get up the energy to write similar reviews (critiques?) in the future.

I hope that this hasn't been offensive if any of you are committed Ron Paul fans. I also hope that through all of the scathing words you've been able to find something insightful. This post also gives a bit of a feel for my frustrations as far as politics. My lament could be summed up in one line, which some of you should connect with Plato's The Republic:

Where, oh where, is our Philosopher King?

Join me in my search.

What the Blog?!?

2007-07-05T12:19:00.000-06:00

I'm sure ten million blog posts around the English-speaking world have started with that title, and that rightfully so. I'm in sort of a silly mood. I was going to set my status on Facebook as "Josh is... aspiring?" But it didn't quite sum up all of the weird nuances of goofiness. But if I could have an unlimited number of status messages at once, thus more accurately reflecting the convoluted complexity of human emotion, they might go something like this....

Josh is... aspiring?
Okay, you already knew about this one. But, what the blog could it mean?? Such a riddle I will now propound for you: Josh is aspiring to do something downright excellent with his life. Yes indeed, he's aspiring to awesomeness. Josh is aspiring to be some sort of freelance open-source software dude. Or, to be a non-freelance, Google-employed open-source software dude. To finish his rapidly developing program that facilitates merging of family history records. Along with that, he's aspiring to be an author. Of what? Well, what does an author auth? Poems, Short stories, Commentary. Novels. Screenplays. Treatises. Blog entries. Cryptic things in French that people will later quote but not understand.

One who aspires is an aspirant. What is the thing aspired to? Ah yes, an aspiration.

Josh is... chronicling his life.
There's a program on my computer called F-Spot. Anybody fortunate enough to be running any vaguely modern version of Ubuntu will have it, too. In F-Spot I can see all of my photos like you can in Picasa, but I can also add tags to them. Tags are just a label. It can be anything, from the names of the people in the picture, to an event that it was connected with, or whatever. I want to record the who and what of my photos while I still remember it.

I've also been typing up my journals onto the computer. This is a massive project. In the past 12 or 13 years I've amassed many hundreds of pages. Someday I want to assemble these and other random tidbits such as emails and chats into a compendium, an enormous volume documenting my life experiences. And it shall be called something strange such as Monstropoliton or Confessio Iosi or even Master of Hipness: 100 Classic Blasts from the Past. Yes, my own 10 volume chronicle of life, but even better than the chronicles of old, for mine shall be illustrated, or at least sprinkled with color images from the golden days of digital photography.

Josh is... transfixed by the awesomeness of cool music, old and new.
It's impossible to really describe the excitement, the elation, of discovering a bit of music that -- simply put -- does something for you. Music has been an important part of my life ever since I first greased up the slide of my trombone 12 or so years ago (seems to be about when my journal writing started.) Sadly, since high school my love affair with music has suffered some tragic relational neglect. Not only have I ceased to play in any performing groups, but I've largely ceased to discover anything new to listen to, to receive inspiration and ideas from. As awesome as Fresh Aire VI is, it can only get you so far beyond the first decade of frequent listening.

But, in the last year or two there has been a bit of a reawakening within me as I've picked up the guitar a bit and found some new sources like Buena Vista Social Club -- truly the first jazz or jazz-esque music I've found so supremely worth listening to since I first became acquainted with both Chuck Mangione and the legends of big band an entire age ago -- or from the most recent wave of Amazon gift certificate purchases, La Oreja de Van Gogh and The Decembrists.

Josh is... going to work!
Yeah, better earn me some summertime moolah to keep food on the ol' table and prevent dog days boredom. So, I'm off to engineer language features and tweak statistical models! I'll have to report on my Independence Day activities later. Take care!

We Are Children of God

2007-06-16T01:01:00.000-06:00

What does this mean? Here are some ideas:

The all-consuming fire of God's love

There is simply no end to it. I don't claim to understand it because my imagination of love is generally limited by the degree to which I am able to love. But I can believe in the unendingness of his concern and his care.

Confidence in self and faith in the future

Father in Heaven plans and works continually for our good. It's difficult to fathom because we often assume he is subject to the same limitations that we are, but he comprehends in exquisite detail the consequences of the happenings in our lives. He knows what he wants us to be. Don't you suppose that each day angels are dispatched to set in motion the chains of events that ultimately bring great blessings into our lives?

You are never alone
Angels and the Holy Ghost are also sent to comfort us, to guide other people to help us, to helps us to live lives more fully and happily than we would on our own. Do you ever get the feeling that left up to your own devices things wouldn't be going so well? Well, that's because they wouldn't be, and you aren't left to your own devices!

No farewells
We will see our friends and family again when united before God's throne. Of course we will say 'goodbye' to people, and we will miss those who step from mortality to immortality before we do. But there will be reunion! The tears we shed upon parting in this life will be dried in the next as we renew the sweetest associations we enjoy here.

Life without an ending
We will, in our happiest state or better, exist continually from now onward into eternity; death need not destroy our relationships, our personality, our hopes, our selves; we ought to treat each other well, because we could influence the quality of other people's eternal existence by what we do and say; for those whose existence here makes them wish there was an end, there will come and end to their suffering.

We can be so much more
Let us lift our heads up to see a brighter vision, a nobler view of ourselves. In spite of our failings and deficiencies, in spite of the weaknesses that to us are blatant and inexcusable, because we are children of God we can be – we are – good. We can be kind, we can discover truth and fight to defend it, we can love fervently and endure hardship for the good of those we care for. [In Old English, God literally means good, after all. Children of good! How could we become something that our parent is not?]

We can choose to follow him
Because he is worthy of our trust and of being followed and emulated. Because there is no better companion for traveling the roads of our lives.

I Disapprove: English Immersion as Foolishness and Arrogance

2007-06-15T11:24:00.000-06:00

See this link about English immersion education programs. English immersion sounds like something that foreigners do when they want to learn English fast. That's something such a system is good for. However, at least in California, English immersion is in essence a rejection of bilingual education. Now, maybe that's a good thing. Maybe California's bilingual education programs were sufficiently flawed as to be worse than English-only. But English immersion to me represents foolishness combined with arrogance.

Foolishness
A better system in many regards is two-way or bilingual immersion. In such a program, children from their youngest years are taught in both the dominant language (English) and a minority language (usually Spanish, though French, German, and Japanese are seen). They receive language instruction -- in other words, grammar, composition, literature, speaking and presentation skills -- in both languages. As the theory goes, this produces students competent in both languages.

English immersion, as I understand it, is essentially two-way immersion chopped in half, yielding -- okay, do the math -- one-way immersion! So it means "English only." The article I linked to above claims that this results in improved English proficiency (likely true) while usually still maintaining the minority language at home. This last point is the tricky one. Yes, many students will continue to communicate with their families in the minority language. But no, this is not equivalent to receiving an education in/on that language. As far as being useful in the workforce, it will suffice for blue collar jobs and nothing more. Do latino immigrants not deserve a chance at reaching higher than that? English immersion sacrifices rather than develops the native language of immigrant students. While English is arguably the most important language to have mastery over in this country, it is foolishness to cast aside easily-developed native-language resources. In refusing to educate elementary-age students in Spanish, we increase the amount of work required later on: ten years down the road they will have to learn a "foreign" language in high school and, instead of learning a third language, they will most likely spend time solidifying their command of their native language (easy A's). We could have taken care of that in elementary school!

Arrogance
There are many children who continue to be able to communicate at a rudimentary level in Spanish while primarily developing English skills. However, unless they begin learning English at a very young age it will never be like a native language to them. And so they have a complete, native mastery of no languages at all. How demeaning! Most native English speakers in the United States would never bother to imagine what it's like to primarily speak a marginalized tongue. Some students develop a sort of lingua-cultural self-loathing because they see that their language and culture are regarded as inferior. Now, maybe I'm leaning a little too much towards the fluffy "let's celebrate all cultures, flower power" philosophy... but, well, maybe a little of that would be appropriate. The greater crime is to raise generation after generation of immigrants with a notion that they must assimilate completely and pretend that their native culture doesn't exist. If that idea had prevailed during previous waves of immigration we might have lost such cultural gems as bagels, pizza, and polka ;-) And do we think that American culture is so all-encompassingly awesome that we have nothing to learn from those who come to our country? What if from the latinos we learned something about strength of family? What if from the asians something about hard work in school? Or from the polynesians how to relax a bit and roast pigs underground? Along with that, there are surely many things that immigrants can learn from our culture, and there are economic benefits not only for them but for their families back in Latin America, to whom they send substantial support money (aka remittances).

The end. Fin. Конец. Terminus.

En españa - totally soaked, newly conscious

2007-05-25T08:41:00.000-06:00

I'm completely wet. Tonight we're going to see the new Pirates movie, Piratas del carribe 3: en el fin del mundo, as they call it here. So to accompany that, we're going to watch the first movie on a projector here at the school. Well, we were supposed to meet at 4pm, so I headed out into a nice thunderstorm to get there on time-ish. I had an umbrella, I had a sweatshirt, I rolled up the bottom of each pant leg, but to no avail. The front of me got soaked all the way to my hips, and my backpack was hit just as hard!

Well, it should be dry at least by the time we watch the new movie at 8:30 tonight. Meanwhile, I've had some interesting realizations about America and Europe. To summarize: I'm more grateful for my homeland than ever. There are certainly problems there, but in many ways it's like a fairy tale compared to the rest of the world. I didn't realize how much we have, materially, culturally, spiritually. Also, I'm more grateful for our friends here in Europe. While the United States made great sacrifices in the second World War and in providing an alternative to communism, we never had our country overcome by dictators or destroyed by nightly bombing raids. We never lived in the shadow of the Soviet Union or had to endure German occupation. In other words, many of our sacrifices were made from a safe distance. Theirs were made right at home. I've had conversations with people here in which I've been able to understand a little better their frustrations with our involvement in Iraq. They see the Iraq war as having been a misguided quest for petroleum. They also feel like the Iraq war has been the cause of the terror attacks in London and Madrid by radicalizing muslims into islamists. Europeans speek much of the fall of the American "empire," which has always confused me. But they (some of them, anyway) also realize that they themselves are part of that empire. The whole of the west enjoys the protection of American strength. Spanish and Dutch people I've talked to feel that America has gone in search of terrorists far away in Iraq, while we already know that such people can be found amongst our own populations, in terror cells in Spain, France, Holland, whatever.

Most people acknowledge that we're seeing a clash of civilizations. The disagreement is really in the implementation details. The question we have to face is whether it's best to stay the course in Iraq. If so (and I think it probably is so) then we must decide how to best improve the situation there. If not, we have to find an exit strategy that is minimally harmful, though I don't know if we can hope to influence things too much as we're on our way out. Either way we need to keep the confidence of our allies in Europe. While in many ways western culture as embodied in western Europe is quite an embarassment in its abandonment of almost all forms of morality and in its paranoiac fear of armed conflict. But, western culture is my culture, one way or another. Here in Spain, there are so many similarities in thought and values to those I am accustomed to that it is clear that we and they have some common roots. We, meaning the United States, need to accept that and encourage solidarity amongst all of the West.

We also want to avoid self-fulfilling prophecies. I think there is truth to the observation that much of the conflict we see right now is a result of East-West culture differences. However, let's not let that observation guide our possibilities too much. We should do whatever we can do to encourage good relations and cultural and economic exchange with the Arab/Muslim/Eastern world. Let us fight the war on terror in the way it's being waged against us. This does not mean that we will adopt the tactics of fear and pointless destruction that we face. Instead, it means that we need to work smart. We've already given in to the temptation to try to bludgeon terrorism with the blunt end of our military might. Instead, we need a specialized intelligence corps - not the FBI, not the CIA, not Special Forces, but something different. Instead of "terror cells" we need antiterror cells. Instead of letting radical propoganda win on the Internet and in public forums, we need people to communicate our message. What is that message? That there is a better way. That America doesn't want to control your destiny. Here, it's yours, take it. Do something good with it. Strengthen your people. Build a beautiful culture. But don't resort to hate. Instead of a cry of jihad let us make a cry of libertad! Let's make Western culture something worth defending. We must not only be the guardians of democracy, but let us also be good people. So to libertad let's add bondad! The jihadists make some accusations against us, such as that we are immoral and materialistic. Let's make sure there's as little truth to those charges as possible. Just as NATO provided an alternative culture in contrast to the Soviet empire, the free world needs to provide if not an entire culture than at least cultural elements that members of the Arab world seeking an alternative can turn to instead of jihadism.

Anyway, I'm sort of rambling. I'll need to refine these thoughts a bit, but here are some kernels of my latest ideas. Take care!

España - 19 de mayo 2007 - Toledo

2007-05-15T11:54:00.000-06:00

I quote from my journal with slight editing.

Trip to Toledo today. I was a bit upset by how things were run, and it represents a trend of neglect by the Mester language school that is ticking a few people off.

Usually we've had the culture teacher as our guide, so while at times a bit dry, she treated us well and we had enough time at each site to be able to learn quite a bit. Today, there was a different lady plus some unknown dude who acted as our guides.... First we went to El Museo de la Santa Cruz, which someone told me used to be a hospital. There was some Visigodo stuff and a neat courtyard; but, we walked through so fast and with so little context that I can tell you no more than that.

We saw a statue of Cervantes, blazed through a synagogue-turned-museum (too fast, once again), went to way too many stores, and saw the outside doors only of the cathedral. The only part I really enjoyed was when we had maybe two hours of free time and the weather turned just a tad rainy and I walked with some folks along the gorge cliff of the Río Tajo - pretty!

Overall, disappointed. How do you say that in Spanish?

The answer is estar desilusionado. Toledo is cool, we just had a sub-optimal experience there. Spain is super pretty! It reminds me a lot of eastern Washington, even down to the wind generator turbines up on the horizon. By the way, I picked up something for Mike there....

I'm giving you a picture of my roommate, Chris, as well. He's got a bit of "gangsta" blood in 'em, in case you can't tell in the photo.

This Sunday we went to the Salamanca branch's meetings. I was amazed by how few times I got lost paying attention to the talks and lessons.

En españa - 12 de mayo de 2007

2007-05-12T11:53:00.000-06:00

¡Hola todos! Today we went to Segovia and Ávila, two towns in provinces neighboring Salamanca. I have to hurry because I don't have enough money to go over 15 minutes on the co mputer without having to split a 20 euro bill to pay like .50 €, so sorry this is rushed. I'm writing a lot more than you guys are seeing, but it's on paper and I don't have the time to type it up for now.

In Segovia there's a great Roman aqueduct (I don't know how to spell that in english, in Spanish it's acueducto). Think, 2000 years old and still standing. With a little help from some European Union human culture preservation fund, of course. There was also a castle called el Alcázar with an amazing moat. Then in Ávila the town had its full set of city walls, an amazing sight from far off and close up. Sorry, no pic there, yet.

Gotta go, hope to share more later! Love you all,

- Josh

En españa - 7 de mayo 2007

2007-05-07T10:36:00.000-06:00

Hola, estoy en España y les quiero escribir sobre mis experiencias. So we got to Salamanca on Sunday night and finally met our host families, but up until then Sunday was packed with visits to the Museo del Prado and the Reina Sofía museum in Madrid, then to San Lorenzo del Escorial, an old royal retreat converted into a monastery a ways out of madrid, then right next to that the Valle de los Caídos with a creepy cathedral where Francisco Franco, the good ol' dictator of Spain, is buried.

But anyway, we got to Salamanca and I and the other two guys in the group (Tommy and Chris) met our host mom (her name escapes me still). All three of us are in one little bedroom, but it's actually a great setup. We had to unbolt this bar from the side of Tommy's bed so he would have room to sleep, then get the heater turned down (it was waaaaay to hot when we got there....) Anyway, we had dinner at 8-ish, and it was some yummy soup plus bread, and also flan in a cup. It was a lot to eat! I was glad to notice that our host has a gigantic copy of Don Quijote in her living room - it's a lot like a family in the U.S. having a big family bible, since both serve as the founding document of modern English and modern Spanish respectively.

We have also living with us a brasilian girl and two french girls, which seemed like it might be trouble given Chris's propensity for hitting on girls, but I think it will work out. The brasileña speaks Spanish and English fairly well, but las francesas don't speak English, or Spanish, or Portuguese, and none of the rest of us speak french, so even with the help of an Español-Francés dictionary we had a really hard time communicating. I wish I could tell you their names or how they were spelt, but I couldn't remember. Last night Tommy and I stayed up late listening to Chris tell stories about his time in the army in Iraq, which was really fascinating. Chris is the only member of our group who is not a member of the church. By typical BYU standards he's a rough character, and seems a little out of place amongst all the rest of us. But he is a great guy - given all he's experienced in his life, he has done a marvellous job keeping his life on track and just generally being a good guy. It's fun to get to know him.

It's been cool to put my Spanish to use and see that I'm in many situations well understood, and I can keep up with what's being said to me as well. At a restaurant we went to we had to leave soon after ordering, so I checked if they could make the food to go (para llevar) and then asked them to do so. Of course, they still originally brought the food out on plates (when I asked them again to make it to go, por favor!) and they messed up some of our order (I wanted a croka, not a pizza, but close enough).

Today was our first day at the language school. I went to the class that I was assigned to - and then I became very frightened about the remainder of the program. The class seemed to having nothing to do with either what I signed up for or with the score I got on the pre-test I took. I sat for an hour and a half and copied down notes on the many exciting uses of the prepositions 'para' and 'en', and it felt like I was just transferring the contents of a dictionary entry into my notebook. A month of that would kill me! Why have I already taken 4 years worth Spanish classes only to be subjected to such drudgery? Well, it worked out that I was in the wrong class, and instead of sitting there for a total of four hours a day (including conversation), I just have to go to a one hour lecture on Spanish culture, which is far more interesting than preposition meaning.

Anyway, my friends are all finished, so I've got to jet. See you all later!

An Introduction to Secret Combinations

2007-04-10T22:56:00.000-06:00

Thousands of years ago somewhere in Central America thrived two opposing civilizations, the Nephites and the Lamanites. Throughout their history, political intrigues plagued the Nephite civilization while the Lamanites sought to gain military mastery over them. About 50 B.C., the leader of the Nephites, named Pahoran, died. One of his sons -- also named Pahoran -- succeeded him, and was soon murdered. Significantly, his murder was not carried out by the Lamanite people who were his natural enemies, but by people from his own civilization.

An Unusual Succession

[In about 50 B.C. there] began to be a serious difficulty among the people of the Nephites. For behold, Pahoran [the Elder] had died.... But behold, Paanchi [one of the elder Pahoran's sons], and that part of the people that were desirous that he should be their governor, ... was about to flatter away those people to rise up in rebellion against their brethren [the rest of the Nephites].

And it came to pass as he was about to do this, behold, he was taken, and was tried according to the voice of the people, and condemned unto death; for he had raised up in rebellion and sought to destroy the liberty of the people. Now when those people who were desirous that he should be their governor saw that he was condemned unto death, therefore they were angry, and behold, they sent forth one Kishkumen, even to the judgment-seat of Pahoran [the Younger], and murdered Pahoran as he sat upon the judgment-seat.

And he was pursued by the servants of Pahoran; but behold, so speedy was the flight of Kishkumen that no man could overtake him. And he went unto those that sent him, and they all entered into a covenant, yea, swearing by their everlasting Maker, that they would tell no man that Kishkumen had murdered Pahoran.

Therefore, Kishkumen was not known among the people of Nephi, for he was in disguise at the time that he murdered Pahoran. And Kishkumen and his band, who had covenanted with him, did mingle themselves among the people, in a manner that they all could not be found; but as many as were found were condemned unto death (From Helaman Chapter 1 in The Book of Mormon).

Thus began a secret organization within the Nephite society designed to destabilize the government, to provide protection from punishment for crimes to those who sought to gain positions of power through deception and/or violence, and overall to make it easier for people to get away with being bad.

From Bad to Worse
The next year after the murder of Pahoran the Younger, this group began to organize itself more formally:

And it came to pass in the forty and second year of the reign of the judges [that because there] was no one to fill the judgment-seat ... there began to be a contention again among the people concerning who should fill [it]. And it came to pass that Helaman...was appointed to fill the judgment-seat....

But behold, Kishkumen, who had murdered Pahoran, did lay wait to destroy Helaman also; and he was upheld by his band, who had entered into a covenant that no one should know his wickedness. For there was one Gadianton, who was exceedingly expert in many words, and... the secret work of murder and of robbery; therefore he became the leader of the band of Kishkumen.

Therefore he did flatter them, and also Kishkumen, that if they would place him in the judgment-seat he would grant unto those who belonged to his band that they should be placed in power and authority among the people; therefore Kishkumen sought to destroy Helaman (From Helaman Chapter 2 in The Book of Mormon).

Capital Murder, Take Two

And it came to pass as [Kishkumen] went forth towards the judgment-seat to destroy Helaman, behold one of the servants of Helaman (having been out by night, and having obtained, through disguise, a knowledge of those plans which had been laid by this band to destroy Helaman) ... met Kishkumen, and ... Kishkumen made known unto him ... his desire... that he would conduct him to the judgment-seat that he might murder Helaman.

And when the servant of Helaman had known all the heart of Kishkumen, and how that it was his object to murder, and also that it was the object of all those who belonged to his band to murder, and to rob, and to gain power, (and this was their secret plan, and their combination) the servant of Helaman said unto Kishkumen, "Let us go forth unto the judgment-seat."

Now this did please Kishkumen exceedingly, for he did suppose that he should accomplish his design [to murder Helaman]; but behold, the servant of Helaman, as they were going forth unto the judgment-seat, did stab Kishkumen even to the heart, that he fell dead without a groan. And he ran and told Helaman all the things which he had seen, and heard, and done.

And it came to pass that Helaman did send [men] to take this band of robbers and secret murderers, that they might be executed according to the law. But behold, when Gadianton had found that Kishkumen did not return he feared lest that he should be destroyed; therefore he caused that his band should follow him. And they took their flight out of the land, by a secret way, into the wilderness; and thus when Helaman sent forth to take them they could nowhere be found.

And more of this Gadianton shall be spoken hereafter.... And behold, in the end of this book ye shall see that this Gadianton did prove the overthrow, yea, almost the entire destruction of the people of Nephi... (from Helaman Chapter 2 in The Book of Mormon).

The prophet-historians who compiled the Book of Mormon thousands of years ago laid out the pattern of secret combinations in an attempt to warn modern readers that such organizations would be found threatening civilization in our time. I believe that they were inspired by God as they did so, that good people in these days might stand firm in opposition to evil. I hope to provide examples of secret combinations in our day to bring attention to the accuracy of the Book of Mormon in its description of such activities, as well as to help people willing to oppose these evil groups and individuals to understand better the nature of the fight. All of this, I believe, can help point people towards the ultimate solutions presented in the Gospel of Jesus Christ as contained in the Bible and the Book of Mormon: that by coming to Christ in our own lives, we can find peace in our hearts that will strengthen us even in moments when we are surrounded by evil.

On the War

2007-02-22T19:51:00.000-07:00

Caption: The Americans bailed, let's get out of here! (Vietnam 1975? Iraq 20x6?)

[Note: this article is a reposting of something I wrote for my family-only blog. It seems to be appropriate for general circulation, though, and I now present it with only the slightest editing.]

I sort of think fighting over politics is like Bible bashing: totally unproductive. Why fight over the Good News? Why start a war talking about a war? With these risks in mind, I do want to throw in a few thoughts of mine.

Those Who Cannot Remember the Past are Condemned to Repeat It [0]
It's important to keep things in perspective. The failure of the Treaty of Versailles after WWI taught the Allies to do things differently after WWII. The debacle of the collapse of South Vietnam after U.S. withdrawal there should teach us to do things differently with Iraq. What happened when the United States pulled out of Vietnam? The Democratic Congress refused to finance further military operations in Vietnam [12] and the south of that country was swept over by the communist forces, hundreds of thousands of people were sent to "re-education" camps as punishment for "collaborating" with the Americans during the war, and Vietnam embarked on a 20 year epoch of isolation from which it has only recently been emerging, at least economically. Vietnam has yet to grant freedoms of religion or speech, and represses those liberties far more rigorously than the Chinese Communists do. [1; see 3 and 4 for more information on the withdrawal and the Communist takeover]

Contrast that with South Korea, where the U.S. forces did not withdraw. South Korea allows full freedom of expression and religion, and turns out to be the world's 13th largest economy, ahead of Australia and Russia [5]. If American support for the war declined to Vietnam-like levels, we may have withdrawn, subjecting the entire Korean peninsula to the benighted state currently reserved for the pitiable North.

Comparing the Costs
Significantly, nearly 60,000 U.S. soldiers died in Vietnam [2], twenty times the current casualties in Iraq after 2.5 times as many years. Given the current average casualty rate, it will take about 72 more years for casualties in Iraq to equal casualties in Vietnam [my own calculation]. Current spending on Iraq is relatively less than in Vietnam as well. (Of course, 1-2% of the GNP of the United States annually is still an astronomical sum.)

About 100,000 Americans die every year as a result of alcohol use according to some sources [6]. (According to more conservative estimates "excessive alcohol use was responsible for approximately 75,000 preventable deaths" in the United States in 2001 [7].) "The total cost of alcohol problems is $175.9 billion a year (compared to $114.2 billion for other drug problems and $137 billion for smoking)" [6]. By contrast, according to [8], the United States is spending about $120 billion a year in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. We could save twice as much money and hundreds of times more lives by eliminating alcohol and tobacco than we would save by withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan. What are our priorities? Is this really all about saving lives and money? Or is it about lack of will, unwillingness to stick with a commitment once we're bored of it? In the Book of Mormon, it's clear that the problem the Nephites had with the infestation of robbers had more to do with having the will to do what was necessary to eradicate them than it had to do with having sufficient strength to do so or with being morally justified in doing so [See 10 and 11].

43% of marriages contracted today will theoretically end in divorce [9].

Many war opponents argue that every life is precious, every soldier's death is a tragedy. True. But at least they are dieing in the hope of helping a nation onto its feet and into a free, prosperous, peaceful future rather than merely in the pursuit of a high or a quick slosh.

Having mentioned the Book of Mormon already, I'd like to say that that book does seem to condemn the way in which we entered the war in Iraq [13]. Regardless, we're there, basically the whole nation agreed to go there, and we have a responsibility to leave things better than we found them.

Post Mortem
Was that so bad? If nobody else cared to read it, I'm still glad I wrote it. I feel like, given media coverage, people almost have no option but to hate the war, hate the president, and just "want out." I have too much respect for myself to simply accept what's handed to me by CNN or even our favorite student paper, The Daily Universe (which mostly just runs Associated Press stories, anyway). I've just had these thoughts bouncing around for a long time, so it's good to get them out.

There is danger in unquestioningly supporting a war. But there is also danger in merely accepting the bidding of the popular media. Supporting or opposing the war in light of history, costs, benefits, consequences, that's getting to the core of the issues.

I conditionally support the war in Iraq and the President. I think the Democratic majority in Congress -- while it brings with it some serious annoyances -- is good in motivating the Republican leadership to innovate and find more effective solutions. As bad as things are in Iraq, they will get much, much worse if we abandon those people. Genocide? Not a happy thing. I still feel like the lives of our men and women are being sacrificed for something noble and still actually attainable, a dream that President Bush and I still share to a large degree: a peaceful, free, democratic Iraq.

References
[0] http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=495329
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Vietnam
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_casualties
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Saigon
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Frequent_Wind
[5] http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/econ/group8/g8size.htm
[6] http://www.marininstitute.org/alcohol_policy/health_care_costs.htm
[7] http://www.cdc.gov/MMWR/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5337a2.htm
[8] http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB114178357697392103-TjKUdWN4qoenDbAFbOI8Ywp2O_M_20070308.html?mod=blogs
[9] http://www.divorcemag.com/statistics/statsUS.shtml
[10] http://scriptures.lds.org/en/hel/6/18,20-21,37#18
[11] http://scriptures.lds.org/en/search?search=robbers&do=Search (The robbers of Gadianton described in the Book of Mormon are a stunningly close parallel to Jihadist terrorists, from their organizational structure to their penchant for hiding out in mountainous regions.)
[12] http://hnn.us/articles/31400.html
[13] http://scriptures.lds.org/en/alma/48/14#14

Life

2007-02-22T12:26:00.000-07:00

I recently had a debate with my roommate about a very significant issue: how do we as a society decide whether and for how long individuals in a "permanent vegetative state" (deliberate scare quotes) are kept on life support. Who decides the matter of the prolongation of their lives? There are a few possibilities:

The Person Himself/Herself?
Yes, if they clearly indicated while they were conscious that they would prefer not to be kept on life support in such a situation. Living wills? Perhaps every person applying to get a driver's license could be required to declare their position officially for future reference?

Parents?
Are parents normally permitted to cause the death of their child by neglecting their needs such as food and water? Will parents always act in the child's interest? What if they were tired of taking care of the kid? Do they always know what their child would have done? If you have children, do you know what they would want? Are you willing to pass that information on even if it contradicts with your views?

The state (bureaucrat, judge, legislators, governor)?
--Cue Orwellian Doomsday Prophecies--
It seems like government making such decisions would be a situation to avoid, but that is the status quo in many cases. In most situations I would prefer the parents making the decision over the county judge, a Health Department case worker, the state legislature, the Govern[at]or, the Senate, the President... the U.N. Secretary General....

The Benthamite Radical Equation
Scenario: X number of dollars are spent each year to preserve/prolong (fill in the blank depending on your ideology) the life of Individual A on life support. X dollars could alternately be used to invest in AIDS research, inoculation campaigns, prevention programs, or sleep apnea education that would -- by prevention or intervention -- save the lives of 10 people. This is classic opportunity-cost that leads us to the inevitable conclusion: Individual A has got to go to make room for Individuals B through K. Right?

If the situation was so simple then the choice would be clear. However, it isn't so simple. For one thing, there are a ridiculous number of alternatives that X dollars could be used for. More importantly, though, there are many more sources of X dollars than diverting funds from the care of Individual A. Please, take a look at the federal budget for the United States and tell me that there isn't somewhere else we could pull resources from, something that isn't a matter of life or death.

Towards demonstrandum
Assuming that the value of each human life is equal, let W be the value of one human life. Given that Individual A is supported for one year by an expenditure of X dollars, the support of Individual A yields value per dollar V = W / X = W/X by unit definition.

Another value-yielding activity is fire ant research. Assuming that Fire Ant Research is less valuable than an individual human being, let us suppose that the value of one year of fire ant research at Tennessee State University is Y = W / 100 (implying that a single human being is exactly 100 times more valuable than TSU fire ant research) and the cost of said research is also X dollars. TSU fire ant research yields value per dollar Z = Y / X = W / 100X. Thus the value per dollar of maintaining Individual A on life support is 100 times the value per dollar of TSU researchers investigating fire ants.

Supposing that Preventative Measure M can preserve the life of 10 individuals (Individuals B-K) over the same time period with an expenditure of $X, the value per dollar yield of engaging in Preventative Measure M is N = 10W / X. Thus engaging in prevention produces 10 times the value yield of maintaining life support for Individual A.

After further investigation, we again conclude that Individual A should be removed from life support and allowed to die, and funding should be redirected to Preventative Measure M, thereby increasing the value yield captured by X dollars. Q.E.D.

...Right?
Wrong.

Demonstrandum, Again
In the above decision we exchanged the W value received by keeping Individual A alive for the 10W received as reward for carrying out Prevention Measure M for a net gain of Δvalue = 9W. However, if we instead divert funding from fire ant research to Preventative Measure M, which gave a value of W/100, we would have a higher net gain in value: Δvalue = 10W - W/100 = 9.99 W > 9W. Therefore, funding Preventative Measure M by diverting funding from fire ant research causes greater overall wellbeing doing so using Individual A's life support money, and we conclude that the best course of action is to continue supporting Individual A and to discontinue TSU's fire ant program. Q.E.D.

Right?
Well... maybe.

Oh, Be Wise
In the scenario presented, we have only considered one other opportunity by which to calculate the opportunity cost of preserving A's life. In reality, there are many, many more opportunities, thus complicating the decision. Given perfect information about the value of each option in terms of resultant wellbeing, the fire ant program would not be eliminated until all other programs, policies, decisions, etc. in support of less effective value sources were eliminated first. Along the same lines, Individual A would not be removed from life support until all other options resulting in less net gain in wellbeing were eliminated. In other words, there is much to consider before we start pulling plugs. As King Benjamin in the Book of Mormon taught, "see that all ... things are done in wisdom and order..." [Mosiah 4:27]. I wholeheartedly agree.

Did you know...

2007-02-16T17:39:00.000-07:00

That one of the main themes in the soundtrack from The Hudsucker Proxy comes from the adagio from Spartacus? Neither did I.

Automated Merger of GEDCOM Files

2006-09-21T23:15:00.000-06:00

Have you ever had the misfortune of having to merge two GEDCOM files while doing family history research? I hope not. It’s dehumanizing. Dehumanizing? Yes, because doing a job that should be done 99% by a machine is most definitely de-human-izing.

Here’s a typical example:
Billy Bob Jones and Suzy Lee Jones are a brother and sister team working together on their family’s genealogy. The two of them live two or three time zones away from each other, and so they each maintain their own files and coordinate their research by email.

One day, Billy makes an amazing discovery: he finds the birth date of their great-great-great-great-great grandfather Olaf. What’s more, he discovers that Olaf’s death date was off by 5 years, so he updates that. Billy emails Suzy to tell her the exciting news, and Suzy requests that he send an updated version of the GEDCOM file so she can benefit from his new research. So Billy sends the requested file.

Suzy imports the file, which only contains Olaf and his ancestors, a total of 200 people (impressive, it’s true). Then she begins to merge all of the now-duplicate individuals, sources, events, …. Five hours later, she finishes, and now wonders if the five hours of tedious merging operations was a fair price to pay for the updated information.

Here’s what should happen:
Upon receiving the GEDCOM file from Billy, Suzy imports it into her family history software, which informs her that one individual has been updated, one fact being modified, another added. She tells the program that this is A-OK and she procedes to make further Amazing Discoveries.

Here’s what should __really__ happen:
Upon updating the Olaf information, Billy tells his genealogy program to notify Suzy of all updates made since they last synchronized their records. The next time Suzy opens her genealogy program, it notifies her of the new information provided by Billy, and she approves the merger.

People have been thinking about this problem for years. The sad reality, however, is that such an advanced merge capability does not seem to be available in any current consumer software (as far as I can tell). Well, why not? Part of the reason is surely that reliably determining the differences between family trees is a complex problem. But what if both versions of the tree are guaranteed to have a common individual? In other words, what if we know that Billy and Suzy’s parents are going to exist in both of their files. What if, in fact, they exist in both files with the same record ID’s? What if the family history software allows the two to synchronize their data by specifying the ID of a common root individual?

If we can depend on constant record ID’s, our job is much simpler. So what if Billy imports his current data into a new system, after which Suzy synchronizes with his system, essentially copying over all of his data, with matching record ID’s and a set common individual. Then, when one of the two makes a change, resynchronizing involves no more than comparing the corresponding ancestors of the common individual, notifying the user of any differences.

That’s where my project comes in. ‘geddiff’ is designed to be the program that does that comparison. It’s straightforward (is it not?) It limits its scope so the algorithm stays relatively simple. It will easily integrate with revision control systems such as Subversion. It will be licensed under the LGPL license, allowing anybody to link to it or call it externally, while ensuring that the source code itself remains open. It will be based on libgedcom, avoiding unnecessary duplication of effort.

Is this relevant? Is it doable? Does anybody want to help? Let me know!

References:
Geddiff project at Google Code: http://code.google.com/p/geddiff/
Beyond Project, discussing many of the same ideas: http://www.beyondproject.org/
BeyondGen, related discussion group: http://groups.google.com/group/beyondgen?lnk=li

Counterpoint

2006-08-15T20:55:00.000-06:00

This is my response to the email I received from “La Russophobe,” whose blog I commented on recently. I have to say that this is the most I ever want to become involved with “blog politics.” I’m not particularly interested in explaining and defending my viewpoints at great depth; I really just express them for my own benefit (putting things in writing can clarify your thinking quite a bit) and to show what page I’m on, rather than to engage in any intensive dialectic.

That said, this letter does serve largely as a defense of my previous position.

I have taken minor liberties in editing this version for publication.

La Russophobe,
I want to thank you for your thoughtful response to my blog post. You raise a large number of interesting points — in fact, so many that I’m sure that I’ll fail to address some of them, for which I apologize. First of all, I apologize for any offense taken at my post. Inasmuch as I ever descend into ad hominem criticism, you are right to point out my hypocrisy.

Now, as to why I criticize your style. By no means am I coming down against there being variety of rhetorical styles. I am, however, stating why I believe that your particular style, as it has been used throughout the centuries, is less effective than others. My belief is that the use of what you might call “fiery rhetoric” is not conducive to a substantive discussion of the facts. This is not to say that in your posts you do not discuss facts, but rather that it is difficult for me, at least, and I suppose other readers to focus on the core of your arguments because the language is so impassioned. This is part of why I believe that the United States presidential debates are so frustratingly shallow — because the “winner” is whichever candidate can score a rhetorical knockout, rather than the one who presents the most compelling ideas. This is why I seemingly come down in support of Yuri’s blog and his style. When I read his writing, I feel like I’m able to glean valuable insight by learning about a Russian’s perspective on his own country. When I read your writing, I simply feel angry! In my mind you do a disservice to your own work by using attack-style language because it provokes an emotional response that overwhelms the value of your logical argument.

This brings up something else. What is the goal of your blog? Your stated purpose is “recording the rise (and hopefully fall) of the Neo-Soviet Union.” I am sorry that you have already concluded that Russia is indeed a “Neo-Soviet Union” — an evil state akin to that built by Lenin and Stalin and their successors. While I agree that it is possible that such a situation will come about, I also believe that by deciding that it has already, you actually make it more likely that it will; a self-fulfilling prophecy. Your rhetorical style, as I discussed above, seems aimed at provoking anger, fear, and even hate, which is certainly counter-productive. By provoking fear and hate towards Russia, you make it more likely that Western citizens will call upon their leaders to take an unnecessarily hard line with Russia, which will cause a Russian response and (perhaps) a chain reaction of policies leading to “Cold War 2.” Is that really what you want? Or would you prefer to discuss Russia in a way that causes readers to understand — without engendering fear or hate? In my view, that is what the goal of all Westerners should be concerning Russia. Provoking a negative reaction to Russia may score ratings, but please consider that there are far more important things in this world than the popularity of any blog.

Finally, I’m just in this for fun, really. It’s an interest of mine. I’m going to be taking a Russian class in the fall, my brother was a missionary in Samara, many of my friends have studied Russian and will be studying in Russia soon. I’m not looking to be a professional lobbyist or anything, but simply to expand my understanding of that country and throw my thoughts out here and there. Also, I’m studying linguistics, which could explain my fascination with your style of writing, or even with your pseudonym (which seems to be an interesting combination of both Greek and Romantic language elements.) I feel like Yuri’s coverage of the child sex exploitation issue was insightful (see his article, Boys For Sale: Russia’s Forgotten Children — a nice tip of the hat to that great musical of the 1960’s, Oliver,) providing a window on Russia that should give Westerners pause. I don’t feel like Yuri posted that information to distract people from what was discussed in the Wall Street Journal article, but to show that the true tragedy of Russia is, and has always been, human rather than political. It’s similar to dissident videos coming out of North Korea that instead of focusing on the glitz of Pyongyang or the intrigue of the nuclear weapons program that attract so much Western media attention, focus on images of little orphan boys, homeless, scrounging scraps of food out of the mud, or of refugees telling of cannibalism in the face of crippling famine and governmental apathy.

I hope that this gives you a better idea of my views on things. I intend to post both your letter and my response to my blog (though it may take me a day or two to get around to it — it’s the end of a term here at school and I’ve got to go out of town soon) although I’d prefer we keep any further discussion private at least initially. Thanks again for your thoughtfulness and for the time you’ve taken to read my response. I hope that we leave as friends, agreeing to disagree but glad for the open exchange of ideas.

Take care, and best wishes,
Josh

Point

2006-08-15T19:50:00.000-06:00

I reproduce here an email I received in response to my previous post, “How to Tell Constructive Writing from Diatribe.”

Dear Josh,
After coming across your comments about our blog on yours, we thought you’d be interested in an update on the situation, namely that the author of Russia Blog has admitted that his post about the Wall Street Journal was inaccurate and misleading. We hope (actually, we expect) that you’ll post this e-mail as a comment to the post about us on your blog as it will undoubtedly be of interest to your group and provide us with a fair opportunity to respond to your statements about us and flesh out the factual record (be sure to let us know if you do).

The author of Russia Blog attacked the Wall Street Journal article about the Extremism Law in two different posts, the original and then a second piece about an alleged child sex ring in Siberia. He argued that Western press was failing to cover the sex story, wrongly focusing instead on issues of press freedom under the Extremism Law. However, he gave absolutely no source material about the Siberia allegations. Several readers called him on this, and he provided links to local news stories from the Siberia region. A reader then challenged him on his claim that the Western press should be reporting those stories, pointing out that since Russian newspapers are notoriously unreliable and the papers are issue were also quite obscure, expecting the Western press to take their accounts at face value and rush to print with them would have been irresponsible. At the very least, only national reports could be given credence, he argued.

The author responds by admitting he was wrong about the Journal and about several other points, and should have focused his ire elsewhere. Here is what he states in response to a commenter:

“I agree with the fact that the sources I listed are local. Also, I apologize for assumption that you “have” to trust RussiaBlog website. The readers who personally know me and other fellows of Discovery Institute do trust information on this website. I guess, what I am trying to say is, it’s not foreign media being guilty. There are think tanks and policy groups, which feed information to journalists and newspapers. The WSJ article was based upon information and report provided by Carnegie Endowment, which has a budget of over $7,000,000 a year for the work on Russia. 3 million goes to the Moscow office, the rest stays with the DC office. Khodorkovsky and Fund Open Russia [I don’t know for sure that the Open Russia link is right — ed.] have been generously supporting this organization.”

Unfortunately, however, the author of Russia Blog hasn’t yet posted a correction in the post about the Wall Street Journal, so a reader who focuses only on that item wouldn’t know about it.

As well, you might be interested to know that the author of Russia Blog works for a think tank which could be viewed as in competition with the Carnegie Foundation, so mixed motives might be present in formulating its analysis.

As you know from reading our post about the author (Yuri Mamchur), which was occasioned when this same commenter complained about Mamchur’s post to us (one of our self-appointed tasks is serving as ad hoc public editor for the Russia blogging community, so readers often bring this kind of concern to us), we exposed the fact that Mamchur grossly misrepresented the Journal’s position on the Extremism Law by failing to acknowledge a huge amount of reporting from other sources that had come to the same conclusion and citing/quoting NONE siding with Mamchur’s view. Our post provides a long list of quotes and citations to this material (this was the main reason we published it). We were very disappointed to see that your blog makes no reference to the citations and quotations set forth in our post, and no reference to the fact that Mamchur’s post is competely devoid of any citations to or quotations from published material agreeing with his view of the extremism law. This is a very gross defect in your comments about the issues, and we hope to see you correct it. (As an aside, you also seem to imply that Russia Blog is the work of only one person, which is not true, so you might want to correct that as well.)

Instead of fairly characterizing the source material offered by the two articles, your blog chooses to focus solely on the confrontational style of our rhetoric. We believe you’re entirely wrong to do so — but not, of course, because our rhetoric is free of “vitriol and attack.” We believe that the only reason Mamchur issued this half-baked correction was his knowledge that, if he didn’t, he’d face another assault on La Russophobe. We believe that radical political leaders from Malcolm X to Lenin to Rush Limbaugh to Don Imus have used the “vitriol and attack” style to great effect, and our blog has show exponential growth in the first few months of its short existence. Maybe you aren’t aware, as a white male, of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” in which he said that people who asked him to change his tone and be less agressive and confrontational were more dangerous to the cause of racial justice in America than the members of the KKK. If you aren’t, you should read the letter before you suggest that there be only one style of writing allowed, or that only one style of writing can be effective. Even if our style of writing wasn’t effective, and had no role at all in prompting Mamchur’s admission (for the record, we believe the evidence is overwhelming that it is effective), we believe it’s a form of self-expression that should be nurtured the way all diversity is nurtured. Criticize us by all means but if, as is the case, you don’t recognize any of the positive aspects of our writing while pointing out what you believe are negatives, then we fail to see how your comments are, ironically, any different from what you accuse ours of being.

And there’s one other thing you ought to know about this situation, which you would have known if you had asked us (by the way, we’ll be happy to answer questions from your group about our post if you have any). It’s this: Some time ago, we published two articles on Russia Blog. Yes, that’s right, on Russia Blog. Both were written in the same vitriolic, attacking style that characterizes our blog, yet Russia Blog published them. The posts drew our customary high level of interest, for which Russia Blog publicly thanked us. Then we discovered some material published on Russia Blog by another contributor which seemed to contain questionable sourcing and factual assertions. We challenged the authors of Russia Blog to resolve the situation, and when they wouldn’t (at that time they were extremely reluctant to acknowledge any error) we broke off relations with them in protest (and outed the situation on our Blog in posts you can find in our sidebar section). To cover themselves, in a highly dishonest move (and a silly one, since our post outing the situation had already appeared), the authors of Russia Blog then buried a comment in one of their posts claiming that they had ejected us from their blog and totally ignoring our accuracy concerns. This claim was utterly false and was proved so, but we didn’t find out about it until someone notified us of the comment’s existence some time later (this too is documented on our blog and since you could have linked to the material, we’re disappointed that you didn’t).

So, in light of that, perhaps you can see why our post about Russia Blog was particularly acidic, most justifiably so. In the future, we’d advise you to check out a situation a bit more carefully before you rush to publish something that is, quite obviously, a half-truth.

However, we’re delighted to know that your group is discussing our post with interest and would be happy to receive more feedback from you. In particular, we’d be interested in knowing which post of the two your readers found to contain more source material and which they found more compelling to read. We acknowledge that if you truly gave a fair and careful reading to our post (which we doubt) then our style may have prevented you from appreciating the point it was making and from noticing the vast amount of citations and quotiations it contained, so that’s a valuable thing for us to think about. If we had it to do over again we’d do it the same way, since we don’t feel any correction from Russia Blog would have issued following your approach (we know Yuri a good deal better than you do, after all). But like all good writers we are always on the lookout for ways to improve our writing, so we always welcome constructive criticism. On the other hand, we think that if you were more familiar with the body of our work, both on La Russophobe and on other blogs, you’d see that in fact we can do your pet style too, and admire our range.

Very truly yours,
La Russophobe

How to Tell Constructive Writing from Diatribe

2006-08-02T22:31:00.000-06:00

Alright friends, I’m going to ask you to compare two blog posts. After that we’ll discuss the differences, just like you used to do in school! The first one is at Russia Blog: “Slander” – The Wall Street Journal Misinforms on Extremism Legislation.

The second is at La Russophobe ( a name which, by the way, means The Russia-fearer (probably feminine, too, because of the ‘la’ definite article): Yuri Mamchur: Neo-Soviet Con Man

What’s your impression? The Russia Blog article was written to persuade (mostly Western) readers that the Wall Street Journal’s interpretation of Russia’s new anti-extremism legislation is incorrect. Russia Blog gives its opposing interpretation that the law Putin signed was not a crackdown on political dissidents or journalists, but rather on Neo-Nazi and Neo-Fascist and threats to that nation’s stability. This is achieved through quotes both from the WSJ article and also from the text of the new law, as well as historical comparisons.

Russophobe, on the other hand, writes to provoke through ad-hominem attacks, attempting to prove the rising specter of the “Neo-Soviet Union.” In fairness, La Russophobe is not the work of a single blogger, but is rather a meta-blog of sorts. (Another note: one of this particular author’s targets, Konstantin at Russian Blog has an interesting response addressing that attack. I only link that scuffle because it helps clarify the situation.)

I noticed that the Russophobe post uses a very provocative vocabulary, and decided to do a little informal analysis comparing it to Russia Blog’s post:

Russophobe
word count: 2575 (561 were the big block quote in the middle, leaving 2014)
count of adjectives:
insane: 4
crazed: 3
outrageous[ly]: 3
wacko: 2
extreme (not ‘extremism’): 1

Russia Blog
word count: 1855
count of adjectives:
insane/insanity: 0
crazed/crazy: 0
outrageous[ly]: 0
wacko: 0
extreme (not ‘extremism’): 0

My real point here is that if you want to persuade and be the one who leads a debate to the conclusion that you support, you can be much more influential by being reasonable than be labeling yourself as a reactionary through attack and vitriol. I’m certainly not perfect and have my moments of more extreme thought (see an example here). But please, if your argument has any merit, that merit will be intrinsic to the argument itself and not dependent on the words you use or who else believes the same thing. Truth stands independent of — but not inaccessible to — perception.

Also interesting reading:
U.S. Suffers Winner’s Complex — Gorbachev
UN lowers risk level for Chechnya — This is added support to Russia Blog’s assertion that Chechnya has stabilized significantly in the last 6 months. I don’t know what’s really going on there, but here’s a piece of evidence to consider.

BYU Dating Reform: Part 1

2006-07-31T00:32:00.000-06:00

So over at Date Club Prophecies you’ll find a pseudo-serious but still thought provoking (in some ways) discussion of dating. Honestly, dating in its present form at Brigham Young University and in the United States in general seems inadequate as a match-making institution and perhaps needs some reenvigorating. Here are some of my thoughts.

The Dilemma

For those who are not familiar with the BYU dating scene, we here are rather traditional as far as the responsibilities of guys compared to the responsibilities of girls when it comes to dating. So it’s incumbent on a guy to ask out a girl. Only very rarely do the girls take the initiative in asking out a guy, and then it is often (at least by me) interpreted as overly aggressive, a definite sign that she must have the hots for you. Just as guys often interpret a girl asking them on a date as a sign of very significant interest, girls often feel that if a guy asks them out more than once, he must have already made up his mind to marry her and is now “moving in for the kill”.

This paranoia is partly founded in BYU’s history and reputation as the “marriage capitol of the world:” some who graduate from BYU single would like to get their money back because they thought that a guaranteed marriage proposal was included with the price of tuition. Probably more significant than the effect of elevated expectations, it’s likely that the girls’ fears of creepy pursuit are based on the collective bad experiences of all modernday BYU women. There are without doubt guys who pursue girls with a singleminded intensity that terrifies their “quarry” and for whom a single date seems like sure confirmation that the girl is ready for marriage. I have known guys with this mindset; indeed, I’ve to some extent been part of this mindset. Creepy guys in Central Park make everybody in New York afraid of their neighbors. Creepy guys in the BYU dating pool make girls afraid of the rest of us.

The Most Frightening Possibility

But casting all of the blame at the feet of “those creepy guys” is avoiding the most frightening possibility: What if it’s me? This thought must eventually enter the mind of all but the most dense and egotistical of BYU’s despairing bachelors: What if I can’t get a girlfriend — can’t even get a girl to go on more than one date with me without getting creeped out — because I’m just not cool enough? What if I just don’t have what it takes to compete in the cut-throat competition for a chica? Oooh, what a dark and hideous thought that one is!

The ~~notion~~ lie that somebody is simply not “cool enough” is total garbage. That idea assumes that the likelihood of the desired result (getting a girlfriend) is a function of the “coolness” (whatever that means) of the guy seeking it. This is true for those whose entire existence revolves around external form and superficiality rather than quality of character and spirit. But for the rest of us… well, there are patterns. More energetic, flirtacious people probably have an easier time getting into relationships because they’re capable of attracting more positive attention at themselves. But overall — I like to tell myself — there are more important factors, especially when you consider not just “hooking up,” but doing so with somebody that you really respect and admire, who’s more than merely an attractive figure.

What are these factors and how do you employ them to your advantage? Stay tuned for Part 2 of BYU Dating Reform where we’ll consider Five Totally Speculative Non-Guaranteed Steps to Getting Your First Girlfriend.

Eighties Heritage Month

2006-07-30T00:18:00.000-06:00

Paris makes more than the law, it makes the fashion

–Victor Hugo in Les Miserables

Would it be accurate to say that prior to the 20th century, very few people had the luxury of worrying about fashion? The impression I get when I read an old novel is that back in “the day” the rich (and the middle class, when there was one) were the only segment of society who weren’t struggling merely to survive and were able to fritter away their time pursuing the latest fashions.

In today’s unprecedented affluence, we have the luxury of falling into the cycle of fashion: ever in need of something new to stimulate our minds and our senses, we are not only willing to put up with frequent change in styles and trends, but we actually welcome it. Just what the girls (and the fashion-minded guys out there) always wanted: an excuse to buy new clothes. But with all of this desire for something novel to entertain us, it seems that the best we can do is rehash the clothes and accessories and hairstyles of the past into a short-lived fashion du jour.

Take, for example, the “comebacks” that the 1970’s and 1980’s have seen in the last ten years or so. Really, as much as I might be inclined to condemn this preoccupation with style as “frittering,” I also think that some parts of those decades’ wardrobes were just plain sweet. But I am a traditionalist; I’d rather see a comeback of some ’30’s and ’40’s stuff. And you know what, I think we do see a bit of that. I would honestly rather wear some nice slacks and a collared shirt to school. I just feel better when I dress a little bit nice!

But anyway, tonight some friends of mine threw an ’80’s dance party, complete with the music, the clothes, and the sweetly-ghetto Namco video game system. Nothing like a round of Galaga to bring back the good ol’ days. I suggested that we campaign to get Congress to make July or August be National Eighties Heritage Month. Why not take some time to acknowledge the great debt we owe to those poor souls who suffered through the side pony-tails, the short shorts and the midriff shirts, the big hair, the nasty, heavy makeup, the big striped tube socks and the fat old baseball caps to bring about a decade or two where we can be free from the oppression of fashion illogic. And then, whenever (if ever?) David Bowie dies, we’ll make his birthday into a holiday as well.

Long live the eighties! But don’t let them live for too long — we need to get on to the next big fashion… the nineties?

Learning C++

2006-07-28T01:53:00.000-06:00

I’m taking (actually, retaking) Computer Science 240 right now. So I’m learning C++. This is someting I’ve always wanted to do. I was maybe 10 years old when we got Turbo C++. My dad was the only one who knew how to use it, but still, I had fun playing with the “Heap Walker” program. I wasn’t able to learn simply by experimentation, like I did with QBASIC. Now, having paid some of my dues with tuition and time, I feel like I’m learning the language. The project we’re working on right now in class is an implementation of make. I’ve been hacking away, learning how to deal with circular #include’s, finding memory leaks and fixing segmentation faults. Maybe sometime soon I’ll be able to start contributing to some Open Source projects - another long-time goal of mine.

Here’s something I would like to code into KDevelop: a plugin that allows the file list sidebar to be sorted to have the most recently used files on top. Somehow there has to be a more optimal way to switch between source files than pushing Ctrl+/ and typing the name of the file, or moving the mouse cursor over to click on the ‘File List’ sidebar button, then back over to the file that you want to open. How about a key combination that cycles through the last five most recently used files? There must be some better way.

I Cast Mine Pod at Thee!

2006-07-28T01:41:00.000-06:00

Lately I’ve been listening to the UbuntuOS podcast about the Ubuntu Linux distro. It’s a good show, for sure, though there’s a bit too much down time where the guys are just sitting there saying, “Yeah….uh…. so linux is pretty cool, yeah…” It really does remind me of my conversations with my brother, but with some more varietous viewpoints.

The people on the ‘cast are constantly citing website addresses or terminal commands. It would be useful to develop a technology that would allow the people speaking on the podcast to send text directly to the listeners. Imagine the show mentions a website, and up pops in the corner of your screen or your media player a notification window. Why not use libnotify/notification-daemon? Actually, such a technology already exists in the form of Vorbis metadata. At least one program, called FreeCast, seems to have a feature like that.

Last night at some absurdly late hour (as if 2:30am isn’t late) I read a the keynote from OLS. I was very impressed with the debunking of the “Linux has no device support” myth. It’s worth a read.

Amigote vuelve a levantarse la cabeza fea

2006-07-15T00:58:00.000-06:00

Ahhhhrrhrhrhrhhaarrrrhhhhhh! That’s the sound of a thousand joints popping and creaking as I stretch out my blogging muscles. Faithful reader (how can you be a faithful reader of a blog that never posts!?), surely you have observed that a burning VW van no longer graces the top of our beloved peasant kingdom. I did love that burned out terrorist conveyance, but our ways have parted like Hamilton and Burr, like Lenin and Trotsky, like a pizza delivery boy and his sweet pepperoni confections. Now the reign of the ostrich is upon us, and it’s time for another Blog Identity CrisisTM. No, I take that back. The last time we peered into the soul of The Vato, we unearthed an unbearable horror that ought not to afflict humanity again for another milennium.

Entonces… la cosa es que debo explicarles los acontecios de mi vida de los meses que he pasado sin blogear nada. First is that I passed my morphology/phonology class (Linguistics 427) with an A, giving me a 4.0 GPA in all of the classes in the major except for the Senior Seminar (490) which I should take in the fall semester. I’m very glad about that, and I owe the good grade very much to the Lord for helping me to stay sane and do my best, and to my study group, the legendary MorphoMasters.

Second is that the good ol’ español is suffering from serious neglect. Not a single class in the language since fall of last year! My little snippets of spanish in this and other posts are surely riddled with grammar errors that would make my 321 professor choke on his mole poblano (assuming he eats such delights with any degree of regularity.)

Third, I’m now retaking Computer Science 240, which I failed two years ago before I decided to bail out on the CS major. It’s going well so far, with two of our labs done, and the programming exam passed on the second try. The class is a basic course in C++ and advanced programming methodology. Being a great Linux user and fan, this is filling in an critical gap in my skills and knowledge. It’s a good feeling, although I doubt I’ll still be saying that when we’re in the throes of the reimplimentation of ‘make’ or the last project, a chess game. But at this point, with a big black mark on my GPA coming from my previous attempt at this class, I have absolutely nothing to lose (except for a bit of tuition money, of course). Hopefully all will go well!

Fourth, I’ve been following the situation in North Korea very closely, my main sources of information being the Korea Liberator and NKZone blogs listed in the “Liberation” section of my blogroll.

All my love to my friends and family, if I can ever persuade them to keep tabs on my blog!
- Josh

TA and Publishing

2006-04-29T01:01:00.000-06:00

Guess what! I just got hired on as a teaching assistant for Dr. Alan Manning’s Linguistics 430 “Theoretical Syntax” starting this fall. The fact that I got the high score on the final was probably a big help. I’m really excited because it’ll give me some great experience, and help me to keep everything I learned this semester fresh in my mind.

Also, my article “Gutenberg’s Heir: The Internet as an Agent of Linguistic Change” was published in BYU’s English Linguistics student journal, Schwa, Issue 1. While I’m not quite sure how you can get a hold of a copy, I’m very proud to see my work in print.

So, two big milestones for me in the past two weeks. Hooray for a great end of the semester! Almost as if in celebration, my friends and I all went camping and hiking last yesterday near Hobble Creek, close to Springville.

The Hikers

Glorious Crossing

Cool Flames

An Orange on Fire

The Source

The Real Source (closeup)

The World According To Me

2006-04-18T11:15:00.000-06:00

Okay, I just took the “Are you a neoconservative?” quiz at the Christian Science Monitor website and it tells me that I’m a liberal. Okay, so I disagree with President Bush on a lot of things, but I don’t think that’s quite right. I want to explain my position, just to help myself be more clear about it.

Nation Building/Regime Change/Foreign Policy in General: Attempting to remake the world in the express image of the United States is a mistake, and does little but provoke the hatred of the billions of “have-nots” around the globe. I honestly believe that the best interest of the United States is to pursue the best interest of every other nation. Can we provide significant, infrastructure-building humanitarian aid (rather than simply food handouts)? Can we help to improve communications systems and education? Can we help to improve economies by teaching sound fiscal and monetary policies by example?

Which leads us to National Debt: $8,407,057,651,820.76 as of April 2006, that is, eight trillion four hundred and seven billion fifty-seven million six hundred fifty-one thousand eight hundred twenty dollars and seventy six cents. (See the Bureau of the Public Debt for up-to-date statistics. The fact that we have a “Bureau of the Public Debt” is itself a sign of its enormity.)

The continued insistence of politicians in both parties to finance government spending by expanding the national debt is not only bad policy, it’s dishonest. Every single cent of that debt has to be paid for one way or another, whether it’s by causing our economy to tank through crowding out of private investment (money put into federal bonds can’t go into private capital investment,) or by an insane tax increase - this will be paid for by us. No supply-side or demand-side or ghetto-side economic policy is going to expand the economy by enough to create an extra eight trillion dollars worth of revenue. The simple fact is we either have to raise taxes, or cut spending, or hold out until the bubble bursts. I favor eliminating tax loopholes and decreasing spending.

China: China’s human rights abuses, past and especially present, cannot be ignored. While I’m not entirely sure if this justifies our withdrawal of preferred trading status, it makes me consider that possibility. That regime has on its record the oppression of the Fulan Gong movement, refusal to accept the fact that Taiwan is no longer part of their nation but is de facto independent, continued use of prison labor and the Laogai prison system (the Chinese equivalent of the Soviet Gulag), violent suppression of dissidents (not just in Tienenman Square), and the obligatory suppression of free speech, press, and religion in general.

However, all of the current fear-mongering talk about Chinese military buildup and the need of a radical United States response to it is more of self-fulfilling prophecy than mere observation. China will eventually become a free nation not by any external aggression but by the actions of its own people. Our goal should be to avoid provoking a conflict but to be firm on human rights issues. Let’s mold China into a friend as much as possible. Let’s let their rising economic and political power be a benefit to their people as much as possible. No Chamberlain-esque “Peace in our time” appeasement, but not blind, hawkish hate either.

Alliances: I’m with George Washington, who warned against “entangling alliances.” That’s not because I think international cooperation is impossible, or that organizations like NATO don’t have (or never have had) a place. The real reason is because I have read Isaiah in the Old Testament.

Huh? What does that have to do with anything?

Actually, Isaiah has everything to do with our situation. Isaiah consistently warned his nation against trusting in alliances with Egypt or with this or that nation. We need to be wary of trusting in alliances with foreign powers as well. During the Revolution, we cultivated the favor of the French, who then leaned clearly towards the Confederates during the Civil War. During World War II we cultivated the help of the Soviets, who turned out to be cunning opportunists and our worst enemy for the next 46 years or so. We gave arms and assistance to Afghanistan in their fight against the Soviets, only to end up invading their country later on. We supported the Shah in Iran. We withdrew support from Batista in Cuba, allowing Castro to come to power. We threw all kinds of support at “democratic” Russia, which turns out to have been a false friend veering towards dictatorship again. Now we’re trying to build up India as a counterweight to China, and on and on.

Do you see a pattern? I think that we need to listen to Isaiah’s advice and focus more on becoming a better people than on finding salvation in foreign powers.

Welfare: This is pretty simple: some people are indeed so incapacitated as to be unable to support themselves. This includes some elderly citizens, the mentally handicapped or severely mentally ill, or the physically disabled. “Handouts” in the form of Social Security checks and the like are appropriate to support those who truly cannot support themselves. They are foolish when given to those who are capable of gainful employment. Here’s why:

If somebody is poor, uneducated, living on the streets, etc., the way to turn their lives around is not by giving them “a steady diet of government cheese” - handouts will merely perpetuate their dependency. The key is to make any such handouts dependent on their willingness to work - or if they’re unable to work - to get an education. An education is really what the government should be paying for. Then, after the person is educated (assuming they stick with it) they should be able to get a job. If after a certain grace period they are still unemployed, the government gradually reduces and then eliminates its handouts.

Okay, what’s wrong with this idea? Really, if somebody still refuses to work after having the opportunity of a free education and government support, then they are asking for a life of squalor and poverty, and they have little to complain about except their own selves. Well, there are some potential difficulties:

Who qualifies for such support?

Who qualifies for continued support as an elderly, handicapped, or otherwise disabled person?

Should single parents get support for an education, or simply get support for childcare? (I’m in favor of an education)

Immigration: The motto I hear repeated most often is “Let them immigrate, but let them do so legally.” I agree entirely with this. However, the unspoken sentiment is, “Let them immigrate legally - fortunately, it’s practically impossible to do so, so we won’t have to deal with unfamiliar people coming into our country.”

America is for everybody. No, not everybody all at once. We’re not just going to open up our borders and let whoever wants to come rushing in. But we have to remember another motto: “We’re all immigrants.” None of us were born here in the United States because we’re somehow better than others and so deserve greater opportunities. We pretty much just got here by chance. So we have absolutely no right to make America into an exclusive club. That’s a great way to encourage anti-Americanism and to wreck the moral foundation of our thriving economy all at the same time. Let them immigrate legally, and make it possible for real, significant numbers of people to do so. And not just the wealthy citizens of other countries. What happened to this idea?:

"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Radio Free Monticello

2006-02-22T17:17:00.000-07:00

Join the fight to free the tenants! http://www.radiofreemonticello.info

NetLing Release and Website

2006-02-21T15:27:00.000-07:00

From the Release Announcement:

The bits are on the wire and NetLing is live! See the wiki at http://www.netling.org/

NetLing is a tool to aid in historical analysis and live monitoring of lexical variation using Internet-available bodies of text as corpora (i.e. Web, Usenet, mailing list archives, IRC chat, etc.) The initial release is designed to analyze the correspondence of the Linux Kernel Mailing List, though expansion into a wider range of data sources is a priority due to the extremely technical nature of that list. The program itself is written in Ruby and designed to interface with a MySQL database, although efforts at database independence (to allow Postgres, Firebird, and so on) have been made, and will be a focus for the next release.

NetLing was inspired by the author’s observation that his English usage began to shift lexically away from American and towards British and continental European usage as he interacted in online mailing lists with people from those regions. Though the project initially focuses on English, its ultimate vision is to gain a view of past and current directions in the lexicon of many of the world’s languages.
The project is so far a one man show by Josh Hansen, an undergraduate student in linguistics at Brigham Young University. Help and answers are available at joshhansen@byu.edu

Down with Eclipse.org’s Flirtation with Playboy

2006-01-28T20:04:00.000-07:00

Okay, this irks me. Good old Eclipse, the Java development environment, is taking advantage of the generous offer of “Playboy Enterprises” to host a mirror site of much of its software. I publicly protest this tacit endorsement of one of the great producers of filth and destroyers of homes in our country. Eclipse Foundation, you have enough mirrors. Stop giving free PR to Playboy.

Wordpress 2

2005-12-30T22:58:00.000-07:00

Hello! In addition to continued outrages in Russia and China, there’s another change going on that you should know about: ¡Oye, vato! is now running on Wordpress 2, just in time for the New Year!

What Are We Doing?

2005-12-30T22:14:00.000-07:00

What are we doing becoming so cozy with China? How long can we continue to turn a blind eye to things like this, a new crackdown on China’s most liberal media, as reported in the International Herald Tribune? Here’s some more coverage by Guardian Unlimited.

Ukraine and Yuschenko Stand Firm on Gas

2005-12-29T13:21:00.000-07:00

Forbes reports that Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko has rejected a Russian loan as a means of coping with impending hikes in prices by Russia’s state-controlled Gazprom. According to the article, Gazprom is forcing a 4-fold increase in prices upon the Ukraine. Others have speculated that this action comes as retribution for the defeat of the Kremlin’s candidate in Ukraine’s elections last year, in which Viktor Yuschenko overcame poisoning and election fraud to stymie the Kremlin’s undue influence in that nation.

Congratulations to Ukraine for refusing to become entangled with Russia by accepting the Gazprom loan.

The Return of Russian Despotism

2005-12-29T13:13:00.000-07:00

This Washington Post article sums up the state of affairs in Russia. Key points include:

Supression of free media outlets
Forced nationalization of key economic sectors, such as the oil industry
Punishment of neighboring countries using oil prices as a weapon
Manipulation of the national legislature to make it subservient to the Kremlin

The net effect is a removal of most of the checks that originally existed to contain the power of the executive. All of this prompted resigning Kremlin economic adviser Andrei Illarionov to say that “[Russia] is no longer a democratic country. It is no longer a free country.”

Please also see this Freedom House press release concerning recently approved legislation to restrict the activities of Non-Government Organizations in Russia. Note that Freedom House has recently lowered Russia’s rating from “partly free” to “not free.”

Longing and Delight

2005-12-27T01:45:00.000-07:00

The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things — the beauty, the memory of our own past — are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited. — C.S. Lewis

Performancing - What’s the License?

2005-12-22T19:25:00.000-07:00

The folks over at Performancing are offering a pretty nifty Firefox extension that allows blogging integrated into the web browser. Here’s a screenshot. But what license is it released under? Is it open source so I won’t have to worry about it suddenly not being free anymore? If anybody knows, drop me a line.

Wikipedia: no muy autoritario

2005-12-13T18:28:00.000-07:00

So, there’s all kinds of stink lately as a result of Wikipedia’s defamatory information debacle. Today, I got back a paper back in my Spanish Literature class. In that paper, I cited Wikipedia’s Spanish language article on the Ultraism movement in Spain in the early 20th Century. I also cited Wikipedia for some information on Jorge Luis Borges. My profesor wrote a comment referring to Wikipedia on my works cited page: “Cuidado con esta enciclopedia que es de entregas voluntarias. No es muy autoritaria.” (Caution with this encyclopedia, which is from voluntary submissions. It isn’t very authoritative). Of course, I know that already, but when you’re pressed for time it’s often the most convenient source. So my question is not, Should I find different sources? My answer to that is already “yes”; if I’m doing a research paper I’m never going to cite Wikipedia! (This paper was just a literary analysis.) My real question is, What can we do to make Wikipedia - or some similar project - factually reliable?

Over at j’s scratchpad, a blog by a news librarian over at Harvard, there is some convincing evidence that the majority of edits on Wikipedia come from registered users. The latest incremental reform attempting to make Wikipedia more dependable [is ???]. But that’s not enough. It doesn’t prevent the sort of defamatory comments that have gotten Wikipedia into trouble lately. Here are a few thoughts on what would be enough:

Create a fact-checking review team. These would be registered users charged with checking the validity of articles. These users would rate each other based on the accuracy of articles that have passed their inspection. Every article would show in a prominent location its fact-check rating, which is essentially a rating of the people who have reviewed the article. Because articles are frequently revised, readers would have the option of viewing a “certified version”, the version that the reviewers have approved. We do have to consider that Wikipedia sees 15,000 new articles a month. Odds are the fact-checkers would never in the near future get close to covering the entire encyclopedia, but it might lend additional credibility to the articles that are checked.
Eventually, Wikipedia’s growth and modification rate may decrease as its topic coverage and article quality mature. This might allow the fact-checking teams to eventually cover a large proporcion of the articles.
Require an extensive bibliography for any article before it can be “certified” by the fact-checkers. Some articles currently include decent bibliographies, but many more do not. Additionally, there is little guarantee that the bibliographies are not simply padded. What I want to see is not just general bibliography entries, but specific citations. That means page numbers and text within quotes. That means some sort of a system of footnotes or in-line citations. This way, an article would be verifiable.
I’m fortunate enough to have BYU’s Harold B. Lee Library just up the hill from me, but not everybody has access to such a research library. I imagine that there are a sufficient number of university students involved with Wikipedia that this isn’t an entirely unreasonable requirement. We have already discussed the point of the percentage of articles that can receive such detailed attention in #1.

I’m more or less a fan of the general idea of Wikipedia. A combination of these two and perhaps other “reforms” could improve the quality and reliability of Wikipedia without throwing out the speedy, wide-ranging coverage that its open editability provides.
Comments? Contradictions? It’s a very interesting debate.

Amigote: a blog identity crisis!

2005-12-11T00:19:00.000-07:00

Ok, I’ve begun the process of developing my own theme for this blog. It’s ancestry goes directly to the c3ro theme, and basically it is exactly the same… for now! The name of my version of the theme is “Amigote” which as we all know is Spanish for “big jerk friend” (approx. translation). I figured, Hey, the name of my site is “¡Oye, vato!” for as-yet unexplained reasons, so why not make the name of the theme be “amigote” for similarly unexplained reasons?

Which leads me to a much needed digression: it’s time that “we” here at “¡Oye, vato!” suffer our first blog identity crisis! Everybody cheer!

The first problems are, What the heck does “¡Oye, vato!” mean? and ¿do you always have to write the upside down exclamation point? From the lovely website Pachuquismos we get this definition of ‘vato’:

Vato: Used instead of “homeboy”, “dude”, etc.

So pretty much this blog could be retitled en inglés, “Hey, Dude!” Except that’s not nearly as cool and was the name of a ridiculous TV show on Nickelodeon a million years ago (does anybody else remember that?)

Moving on (without addressing the exclamation point issue)…. “We” “staff member(s)” here at ¡Oye, vato! are realistic about the amount of exposure our astoundingly insightful commentary on world events and the state of software receives; so far, we know of one semi-regular visitor: The Shark. You know, the fellow who brought you such moving posts as Russian squirrel pack ‘kills dog’ and… Anyway, «the editorial board» here, while grateful for the consistent high quality of The Shark’s contributions to the ¡Oye, vato! community, acknowledges that a greater diversity of worldviews and a greater number of eyes looking for psycho news stories are both in order. For this purpose, we are now listed with Technorati in an effort to increase The Vato’s sphere of influence.

So, as we wrap up this identity crisis, let’s review:

always refer to the first person singular using the first person plural

And that’s pretty much it. Thanks for tuning in, and sorry if the sarcasm was a bit too thick. Good night!

Shanwei/Dongzhou Massacre

2005-12-10T13:52:00.000-07:00

Please read and compare the Chinese state news agency’s report on the massacre to this one in the Epoch Times. As you can see, the official version of events is a bit watered down!

Additionally, there is a very good photo gallery by the Epoch Times. I’m surprised they were able to get these sorts of pictures of the villagers facing lines of soldiers.

Should we really be trading with this nation? We at least have reason to hesitate continuing our cozy trade relationship with the world’s largest totalitarian government.

What Happened to Open Debate? (More on Lieberman)

2005-12-10T13:04:00.000-07:00

This article at the New York Times reveals an interesting perspective on Senator Lieberman’s position on the Iraq war:

[Senator Lieberman] said the two sides were making too much of his comments, and he argued that the overreactions reflected how politically polarized the debate over the war had become.
…
“The positive and negative reactions may have less to do with the substance of what I said than with the fact that a Democrat is saying it,” Mr. Lieberman said. “It reflects the terribly divisive state of our politics.”

The senator has a point. I made a big deal out of his seemingly pro-Iraq war comments in my recent post. I think my reaction and that of many others was guided at least partly by politically polarized, agenda oriented motives.

The general idea we can distill from all of this is that in the current state of things, there is little openness or even freedom of thought and expression for our nation’s leaders because partisans and special interests try to force them into one or the other ideological mold. Perhaps the most creative and effective solutions to our nation’s problems are being quashed in the contest of ideas that has become — instead of a fair fight in which the best ideas win — a war of attrition.

Date With Destiny

2005-12-03T00:38:00.000-07:00

Here is my group’s film for the 2005 Oscars competition: Date With Destiny. [Note: Don't expect this to work any more!]

Firefox 1.5 Bursts Free? Sneaks Out

2005-12-03T00:25:00.000-07:00

Firefox 1.5 has been released. For a list of the crazy new features, check here. I think that all the hype is waiting for the Firefox Flicks ad competition.

This release seems like a much more subtle event than the bold release of 1.0, for example. This is because when you open up the new version of the browser, all you notice (at first) is that some of the menus are rearranged, and the preferences window is horizontal instead of vertical. However, the things you don’t notice are more significant. Try, for example, integrated SVG support. Or XForms. Or the fast forward and back navigation. Or perhaps the expanded accessibility features. We shouldn’t fail to mention the new automatic updates, closing the only real gap between the security capabilities of Firefox and Internet Explorer.

One feature I’m not sure about is the “Clear Private Data” tools. This allows the user to clear all data such as browsing history, cookies, etc. that leave a trace of what they have been up to. This has some definite benefits, such as making it safer to use public kiosk computers. It just might also enable easier unauthorized or otherwise unwanted use.

And those are my thoughts.

Russian squirrel pack ‘kills dog’

2005-12-03T00:03:00.000-07:00

Another sign that Russia’s welfare system has seen much better days. Read it here.

Thanks to Shark of The Shark’s Byte for the hilarious tipoff.

Another Call for Sanity

2005-10-27T16:55:00.000-06:00

Another call for sanity has been issued by Jem Matzan of the Jem Report:

I’m getting desperate for a word processor made for writing — letters, articles, books, essays, and that sort of thing. I don’t want to design banners, fliers, brochures, or hand-outs. If I need to do those things, I’ll use a desktop publishing program like Scribus. I don’t need to draw in my document; I have The GIMP and Inkscape for drawing. Please, somebody do for OpenOffice.org what Firefox did for Mozilla, and cut down Writer into something that resembles its name. If people really need to do all of that extra stuff, maybe it should be in its own separate desktop publishing program instead of jammed into a word processor.

And another appreciated insight:

The uselessness of a meeting is directly proportional to the complexity of the PowerPoint presentation. If you want to quote me on that in the future, mark it down as Jem’s Law.

I don’t agree 100% with the ideas in this article, but thought it was interesting to see another recommendation to Firefox-ify OpenOffice.

MORE OpenOffice

2005-10-20T18:26:00.000-06:00

There’s some more discussion over here and over here that resembles some of my thoughts on the development of the OpenOffice.org office suite (a replacement for Microsoft Office).
Once again, my take on it is that:

While each individual OO.o application should be pared down and allowed to have “extensions” like Firefox does, the applications should be kept together as a complete suite. Otherwise, individual applications could lose steam/critical mass;
OpenOffice should be ported to a standard toolkit such as GTK+ so it doesn’t look so ugly! That is to say, so that it has an interface that really blends with the rest of the desktop rather than using GUI hacks to almost blend in.

Perfidia?

2005-10-08T07:41:00.000-06:00

And now she has a boyfriend! Salt in the wound, insult to injury, a slap in the face. But really, it’s not so bad. I hope she finds happiness. I don’t suppose I want to be around her, at all really. There’s a lot of pain tied up in my memories of her. So, may she find joy and peace, but may I never see her again!? That doesn’t seem right. Well, I’ll think about it.

Meanwhile, there are a lot of great things to do around here. Here’s tonight’s nighttime hike to Stewart Falls up by Sundance:

Along with the usual suspects, of course: All of my roommates with their dates. We got going a bit later than planned, so by the time we got up to the falls it was pretty much pitch black. That did have the great advantage of allowing us to see the beautiful, clear night sky as we ate Paul’s famous chili with some grilled-cheese sandwiches.

Tomorrow I’m supposed to be going to Salt Lake with the BYU Interpretation and Translation Training Club. We’re going to take a tour of the Church’s translation and interpretation facilities at the Conference Center. I plan on sleeping on the ride up!

Also, I did a long phonetic transcription of Bob Vila explaining in Spanish how to prepare for a hurricane. “Estamos en estado de alerta por un huracán….” I listened to that recording many more times than I really wanted to, but hey, it’s Bob! There are worse things.

Good night!

OpenOffice

2005-10-07T06:43:00.000-06:00

I’d also like to say that in general OpenOffice.org ~~is a pretty lame piece of software.~~ is rather good but has quite a number of areas for improvement (sorry about the previous negative attitude ;-)

First off, does it even use a standard GUI toolkit? No. Why not? Because it’s legacy software: OO.o has a long history, dating back to its StarOffice days before coming under the auspices of Sun Microsystems. First order of business: move over to Qt or Gtk, both of which are ported onto every significant platform OO.o would want to be involved in.

Second: it’s huge and slow. The “Options” window is cluttered worse the the KDE Control Center (and that says quite a bit). Some of the components depend on Java. The “Draw” program can’t even import SVG files and never prints correctly. Because it doesn’t use a standard toolkit, it has issues with some Unicode characters, even when using a font that supports those characters. Usability and UI design also seem to be a low priority for the project (I know it’s not, but it appears so).

So what do I recommend? Since the likelihood of OpenOffice ever actually being ported to a standard GUI toolkit is essentially zero, I recommend that development effort be focused on bringing apps such as Gnumeric and Abiword up to speed with the featurefulness of OO.o.

My dream recommendation, given any amount of resources being made available, is that OO.o be ported to Gtk. Then, it would be restructured to be the Firefox of office software - a lean core functionality and a flexible “Extensions” mechanism. This would hopefully lower the barrier-to-entry for programmers sufficiently as to encourage wide participation by people interested in improving the office suite. The lean core could then be focused on and maintained more effectively than the massive bulk of the do-it-all office program.

Cute Girls

2005-10-07T06:16:00.000-06:00

They look wonderful. They smell wonderful. They’re wonderful to hug. I’m a big fan of cute girls.

In other Ramblings… I love to spend time with people. Really, I love to. That’s why this first half of the semester is driving me crazy. I’m taking a First Block class that requires at least 10 hours of time in class each week. It’s made me so wildly short on time that I almost never get to spend time with friends, or even make many friends in the first place. I’ve decided that while yes, I do need to be busy and have things to do, I also need time to be a person. I need to be able to play a little bit and remind myself that there is a life to live! That I’m not in college for its own sake, but to be able to support myself and a family so I can live that life.

I’ve also decided lately: I don’t think Spanish Teaching is for me. Here are some of my reasons. First, I have a lot of really negative memories from my school experience growing up. I mean, I had some teachers who did some pretty crummy things that I didn’t know how to deal with when I was so young. They honestly were complicit in the production of the negative atmosphere upon which some of my most difficult times in life festered. I had a lot of teachers who were just plain bad teachers - only the teachers union seemed to be keeping them in place. Teachers with emotional issues that should have kept them from teaching. Those memories make it so school is not the #1 place I want to go back to.

Second, I love learning to speak Spanish, but I don’t love Spanish. On top of that, my Spanish skills really aren’t so wonderful. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve really come a long way and I’m proud of where I’m at considering the limits of my learning opportunities. However, I don’t think that my proficiency will ever get to the point it needs to be at to do justice to the subject and to the students who enroll in it. The main issue here, however, is that I don’t enjoy the subject itself enough.

Finally, I don’t want to be stressed out all the time about finances because I’m trying to survive on the meager salary of a teacher in America’s public schools. This reminds me of the talk Elder Dallin H. Oaks gave at the last General Conference of the Church. Describing the differences between the use of the priesthood authority in the Church versus in the home, he said, “Church callings are always temporary, but family relationships are permanent.” I believe that that can be extended to imply that because family relationships extend into eternity, whereas career/profession/employment is only a temporary situation during mortality, the good that I could do to society through my career is secondary to the good I will be able to do for my family by supporting them and being an emotionally-available father for them. I doubt I would be able to operate at top capacity if I was constantly fretting over finances.

So those are my latest thoughts. I also recently discovered that BYU has a “Computers and Language” minor that I could combine easily with a Linguistics major. Hmm… now to find myself one of those cute girls!

"That's a Promise!"

2005-10-01T05:04:00.000-06:00

In a recent interview, KDE developer Zack Rusin made some bold and (from my point of view) much-welcomed promises about the future of the Linux Desktop as a result of the Plasma and (by implication) Appeal subprojects of KDE:

Plasma will blow you away. Nothing you’ve ever seen or will see in the coming years will come even close to what you’ll experience with Plasma. And that’s a promise.

Personally, I’m way excited about this. You know how you can use “Extensions” to add to or modify the functionality of Mozilla’s Firefox web browser? Well, one component of the Plasma project is to allow that sort of functionality, for your desktop. Apparently this function is already available in Mac OS X’s latest incarnation.

Photography and Computational Linguistics

2005-06-17T13:22:00.000-06:00

***The albums aren’t working right now ***

Now you get to see a random image from my photo albums on the side of my blog page. I think its pretty cool! All of the pictures on there right now are from the trip that Paul, Mark, and I took to Britten’s house in San Diego during memorial day weekend.

Other news: I took my Spanish 321 final yesterday, heralding the end of Spring term and the beginning of a lazy summer. Yahoo!

Also, I have lately been working on a computer program called NetLing that is designed to do some analysis of word usage patterns in online mailing lists over time. Hopefully I can get some neat results out of it and perhaps get published someday(???)

Last thing: I’m trying to get blogs and photo galleries set up for everybody (my family, my roommates and friends here at school, etc.) Hopefully I’ll have things worked out soon. I’ll let you all know!

It Begins

2005-06-16T12:29:00.000-06:00

Thus begins the new blog of Josh Hansen. Behold its awesomeness!