Pure Speculation

Dilbert Principle -- Satire, unintentionally real

I guess I’m behind the times. I just got around to reading The Dilbert Principle by Scott Adams. It’s a satirical book on dysfunctional corporate culture that’s eerily accurate, and explores the following principle:

The most ineffective workers are systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage — Management.

Barbara Bush insisted donation to Katrina fund help son's firm

I don’t watch Fox News, but somehow I doubt Bill O’Reilly will be covering this story:

Former first lady Barbara Bush donated an undisclosed amount of money to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund with specific instructions that the money be spent with an educational software company owned by her son Neil.

Job listing red flag - "part-time position may become permanent"

I hate job listings that describe what the job might become in the future if the immediate project is successful. It seems inherently dishonest to tempt people to apply for a possible good future job as a package deal with a current lower-paying, short-term job.

This is how repression and censorship starts

In this story, note that two actors were detained for over an hour, and one was specifically asked if he planned to make any more “political films.”

Expect to see more and more of these types of events, then less and less. Once this practice becomes common, people will just keep quiet to avoid any hassles. That’s the intent of this sort of thing.

Head-to-Head: perl's eval, Exception.pm, Exception/Class.pm and Error.pm

I wanted to use a more OO approach to error handling in perl instead of just plain old eval, so I did some looking around. I wanted it to be easy, so I looked at these modules:

• Exception
• Error
• Exception::Class

VA Nurse Investigated for "Sedition" for Criticizing Bush

Suppression of dissent is becoming all too common. The tactic of being called “unpatriotic” and “giving comfort to America’s enemies” for opposing Bush and his war has been recognized for its inherit absurdity, and no longer works to stop criticism of the Administration. Now it’s time to step up the methodology to outright intimidation – send in the goons:

New Software Wars Map

A few days ago, I complained about the lack of an updated Software Wars map. I didn’t think I could do it; or, it didn’t even occur to me to do it. I had originally submitted the question as an “Ask Slashdot” question, hoping some able /. reader would decide to make one. The submission was quickly rejected, so I posted the same text to my blog.

Whither Software Wars?

Software Wars hasn’t been updated in well over two years.

Morrisville would make Jack Abramoff proud

There is one truism about politics that is often repeated:

All politics is local.

Tip O’Neill said that.

I will have to add one more truism:

All politics is sleazy.

On buying a coffee table

We needed to buy a coffee table. For years we had been using an old travel trunk as a coffee table, but we got rid of it. Right now we don’t have a coffee table.