The Zeitgeist

Wow… Great article, and, sadly, pretty much correct when it comes to the delivery of Infrastructure.

…via Xkcd

Is software development all about putting together lots of other people’s code? Is there any real engineering and invention left to be done in mainstream applications?

That seems to be the debate at the world’s first Conference on Postmodern Programming recently held at the end of this past November in London sponsored by the Software Practice Advancement Group of the British Computer Society.

Hmmm… never thought of myself as a post-modernist writer (of code).. but…

(with apologies to my old friend Ted, who used to say that whenever he heard Newt spew his garbage…)

By now Newt’s absolute hatred for both Freedom and America have been played and replay all over the airwaves and the blogosphere, but in the vein of fighting “bad speech” with “good speech,” I’d like to continue to pummel (rhetorically, of course) the disgraced ethically impaired ex-Speaker, Serial Liar and Serial Adulterer with some more ideas that probably won’t penetrate his thick and empty skull, but probably will resonate with most Americans who cherish their freedoms and love their country…

Let’s start by looking at some very plain words from a very famous man:

“Restriction on free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.”

It doesn’t get any plainer than that. Who could put such a powerful maxim in such a compact package? Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas who sat on the High Court from 1939 until 1975.

Free Speech was, after all, probable the second most powerful founding idea of this country (the first being freedom from taxation without representation). It is American’s freedom to speak their minds, to criticize and in fact agitate for the (legal and non-violent) ouster of our government that has made America many people in the world would like to live in.

In America our freedom to speak covers not just political ideas, but all ideas. You can write science fiction stories or write new scientific theorems and each of them have equal weight, worth and validity in our system.