in the noonday sun

To sustain a single life is to sustain an entire world

2008-07-05T09:44:00.001-04:00

The sudden decision of the Order of Canada Advisory Council to award the its highest distinction to Dr. Henry Morgentaler has put the spotlight once again on Canada’s abortion architect and activist and raised serious questions about the significance and integrity of the “the centerpiece of Canada’s honours system” which “recognizes a lifetime of outstanding achievement, dedication to the community and service to the nation”.

Henry Morgentaler began his crusade for the legalization of abortion in the 1960s. The 1988 Supreme Court decision that bears his name removed all legal barriers to abortion at any stage of pregnancy – since then, nearly two million future citizens have lost their lives to abortion.

Morgentaler, himself a survivor of the Dachau and Auschwitz concentration camps where he fought for his own survival, said that he has performed more than 100,000 abortions. One may wonder if he ever took to heart the teaching of his own Jewish faith that says: “to destroy a single life is to destroy an entire world and to sustain a single life is to sustain an entire world.”

When Canada honors someone who took the Hippocratic oath and has wreaked such hurt, havoc, sorrow and grief, something is wrong with the Canadian government commission that grants medals and a Governor General who, claiming Catholic roots when convenient, shows herself to be spineless, politically correct and without respect for human life. The recent controversy has also shed light on another dark area of Canadian society: that of the membership of government commissions that consist of patronage appointments who advance personal agendas, reward friends, lurk in shadows of “confidentiality” and hide behind structures and institutions. They pass themselves off as “government officials” when in reality they are not elected and do not represent the public.

During my six years as pastor of the Newman Centre Catholic Mission at the University of Toronto, I felt that I was on the front lines of a war zone against life. One of the most difficult aspects of my pastoral ministry at Canada’s largest university was dealing with many young women (and men) who had abortions. The poor and erroneous advice given to young, pregnant women at university-sponsored sex education centres directed them to clinics for “therapeutic abortions” for unplanned pregnancies.

An initial sense of “liberation” from termination of the unwanted pregnancy was almost always accompanied by deep guilt, trauma, anguish, nightmares for months, an inability to be around children, prevailing feelings of unworthiness, failed relationships, and sometimes a later inability to conceive. While much of the attention surrounding abortion is on the woman, I also saw first hand the devastating effects that it has on young men who fathered the children.

Those who experienced abortions and came to us at the Newman Centre were not fanatical Catholics but human beings who made bad choices, and had been deceived, crushed and terribly diminished. The Governor General was not there to console them.

Dr. Morgentaler and his agents and disciples did not have to deal with these individuals. They merely duped them. Our pastoral staff at the Catholic Chaplaincy was and is still there to help pick up the pieces, extend mercy, compassion and forgiveness, and help heal a broken society that suffers each time life is blotted out.

Henry Morgentaler clearly does not deserve to receive the Order of Canada. He debases the medal and those who have received it for heroism and the building up of Canadian society. Over twenty years of successive Canadian governments have been gutless and without courage to repeal the abortion law that bears Morgentaler’s name.

Perhaps the day has come when Canadians of good will who love life will rise up and say: “enough is enough.” The Canadian killing fields that are now found at the gateways of human life in our country must be transformed into sacred and safe places of life, liberty and security of every person.

Fr. Thomas Rosica, C.S.B.,
C.E.O., Salt and Light Catholic Television Network

On the Raptors

2008-04-15T10:00:00.001-04:00

Okay, so I've purposely avoided writing about [my beloved] Toronto Raptors - especially during this bleak, uninspiring season - but I see that Ira Winderman of the Miami Sun-Sentinal made a couple of very perceptive comments after last night's Raptor's [painful, as in pulling teeth painful] victory over the [sorely depleted] Heat:

If ever there was a cautionary tale about the uncertainties of the lottery, it was on display Monday in the form of Raptors center Andrea Bargnani. Imagine if that was your No. 1 overall pick?
While T.J. Ford could shake free in the offseason, with Toronto to do all it takes to retain Jose Calderon, Ford no longer stands as a coveted commodity. He was outplayed Monday by Chris Quinn, who towered over him.

Documenting Distress

2008-04-12T09:33:00.001-04:00

From Dinoscopus:

...the key to the last 500 (or 700) years of the history of mankind has been its apostasy, its slow but steady turning away from God, in particular from his divine Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ. This eliminating of the true Messiah has left in men's lives an enormous gap to be filled, a gap unknown before the Incarnation. Hence a variety of false messianisms in modern times.

Communism is an outstanding example. It is the messianism of materialism. For it may be just as materialistic as the bourgeois society it seeks to destroy, even more so; and it certainly has nothing better with which to replace the residual human values of that society. Yet Communists are driven by a quasi-messianic urge to create their horrible new world. It is as though they are saying, "Better no god than your false hypocritical 'God'!" And to the extent that the God of the bourgeoisie is a false god, the Communist messianism rejecting it is not false. In this respect Communists may at least be credited with a messianic dimension. Similarly in the scream of protest of Rock musicians there is something just, however negative their protest proves finally to be.

Now Art, Literature, History, Culture, Music, each of them with a capital letter, are all worshipped as substitute religions by modern devotees who, because they have no present religion, pump up these by-products of true religion in the past to take its place. Hence the Dadaists' refusal of "Art", and their "re-definition" of art. "What is your Art?" they ask. "It is our godless god", say the Art-worshippers. "Your godless god is a urinal!" snorts Dada.

-- Bishop Williamson

why i deleted my twitter account

2008-04-11T08:36:00.001-04:00

From gapingvoid:

Olympic Torch in San Francisco

2008-04-09T18:22:00.005-04:00

photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

George Patton quotes

2008-04-09T10:49:00.001-04:00

From Signal vs. Noise:

A few [General] George Patton quotes:

"A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week."

"Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results."

"If you tell people where to go, but not how to get there, you’ll be amazed at the results."

"If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking."

"Prepare for the unknown by studying how others in the past have coped with the unforeseeable and the unpredictable."

"Take calculated risks. That is quite different from being rash."

"The time to take counsel of your fears is before you make an important battle decision. That’s the time to listen to every fear you can imagine! When you have collected all the facts and fears and made your decision, turn off all your fears and go ahead!"

"Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack."

Eric Schmidt on Web 2.0/3.0

2008-04-09T10:23:00.002-04:00

England

2008-04-09T08:55:00.005-04:00

Type of the West, and glorying in the name
More than in Faith's pure fame!
Oh. trust not crafty fort nor rock renowned
Earned upon hostile ground;
Wielding Trade's master-keys, at thy proud will
To lock or loose its waters, England! trust not still.

Dread thine own power! Since haughty Babel's prime,
High towers have been man's crime.
Since her hoar age, when the huge moat lay bare,
Strongholds have been man's snare.
Thy nest is in the crags; ah, refuge frail!
Mad counsel in its hour, or traitors, will prevail.

He who scanned Sodom for His righteous men
Still spares thee for thy ten;
But, should vain tongues the Bride of Heaven defy,
He will not pass thee by;
For, as earth's kings welcome their spotless guest,
So gives He them by turn, to suffer or be blest.

-- John Henry Cardinal Newman

(from Catholic Church Conservation)

Top 10 Traits of a Rockstar Software Engineer

2008-04-08T17:30:00.001-04:00

From Alex Iskold:

Loves To Code
Gets Things Done
Continuously Refactors Code
Uses Design Patterns
Writes Tests
Leverages Existing Code
Focuses on Usability
Writes Maintainable Code
Can Code in any Language
Knows Basic Computer Science

Newton on Tact

2008-03-30T12:53:00.001-04:00

From Sutter's Mill:

Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.

How to create "interesting, cool, and relevant software"

2008-03-29T14:27:00.001-04:00

From raganwald:

The only workable system for generating interesting, cool, and relevant software is well-known. Find a bunch of really smart programmers and point them at a large problem space for which there are actual users, and for which new solutions are unconstrained by old designs.

—Mencius Moldbug, What's Wrong with CS Research

Note the desired outcome: Interesting, cool, and relevant software. Do not become mired in empty debate over the phrase "smart programmers." Instead, ponder the other three preconditions: a large problem space, actual users and most especially no constraints by old designs.

Alan Kay is purported to have said, "A fresh perspective is worth 80 IQ points." You cannot have a fresh perspective when you are encumbered by backwards compatibility.

Meta-level thinking

2008-03-29T14:20:00.001-04:00

From Ola Bini:

I have been trying to figure out what characterizes some of the best programmers I know, or know about...

When people try to become better programmers there are generally a few different kinds of advices you can get. The ones that seem prevalent right now is (among others):

Learn - and understand - Lisp

More generally, learn a new language that is sufficiently different from your current knowledge

Work with domain specific languages

Understand metaprogramming

Read up on the available data structures (Knuth anyone)?

Implement a compiler and runtime system for a language

5 Rules for Making Money During a Recession

2008-03-25T16:00:00.001-04:00

From The Huffington Post - Ann Handley:

Don't cut the budget.
Maintain strong launches.
Get a little silly.
Beware the slash and burn.
You might as well dance.

Dates vs. Quality

2008-03-25T15:44:00.001-04:00

From thisDev (Roy Leban):

What's the best way to avoid problems?

Work at a small company (or in a small group) so you can set your own dates. Large organizations tend to be top down and impose schedules without any idea of what is actually happening.

When you start out, set the date based on what you hope to accomplish. Or, set the date first, then pick a feature set you can implement in the time available. Or, iterate back and forth. But, whatever you do, don't set them independently of each other. I know this isn't news to anybody reading this blog, but it still seems to get ignored a lot.

Be willing to cut anything -- anything -- if you have to make your date. Even features that are almost done. You can always ship them later. If you have an immovable force and an irresistible object, the dev team explodes.

Be willing to change the date if you can't get the quality you want (my wife and I slipped our wedding date because we weren't going to have the quality we wanted on the original date we picked).

Stay calm. No matter what, you will be dealing with the issue at the end.

They say, on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog. Similarly, nobody has any idea what you were going to ship or (hopefully) when you were going to ship. They only know what you actually do ship. And, if you don't ship in the first place, it's pretty hard to ship updates.

The Ethics of Elfland

2008-03-23T12:26:00.001-04:00

As much as I ever did, more than I ever did, I believe in Liberalism. But there was a rosy time of innocence when I believed in Liberals.

It is quite easy to see why a legend is treated, and ought to be treated, more respectfully than a book of history. The legend is generally made by a majority of the people in the village, who are sane. The book is generally written by the one man in the village who is mad.

-- G.K. Chesterton (Orthodoxy)

Five Years in Iraq - What's the Problem?

2008-03-23T10:27:00.001-04:00

From The Huffington Post:

We know the numbers - 1 trillion dollars, 5 years, 775 detainees in Guantanamo, 935 false statements made by the administration, about 4,000 dead Americans, 30-50,000 wounded soldiers, over 100,000 soldiers with treated and untreated PTSD, almost a million dead Iraqis, 2 million internally displaced Iraqis and up to 3 million Iraqi refugees who have left the country.

But apparently this is not a problem...

...unlike the Jesus we remember this Easter, overcoming death to raise our own moral standards and free us from unproductive and selfish lives - the dead Americans and Iraqis are going to stay dead as permanent testaments to our lack of ethics, our economic barrenness, and our supreme selfishness. One thing is for sure - and maybe the mainstream media actually got it right. You can't blame Bush and Cheney, five years later.

-- Karen Kwiatkowski

12 Essential Rules to Live More Like a Zen Monk

2008-03-18T22:29:00.001-04:00

From Zen Habits:

“We have more possibilities available in each moment than we realize.” - Thich Nhat Hanh

Do one thing at a time.

Do it slowly and deliberately.

Do it completely.

Do less.

Put space between things.

Develop rituals.

Designate time for certain things.

Devote time to sitting.

Smile and serve others.

Make cleaning and cooking become meditation.

Think about what is necessary.

Live simply.

White knights [?!]

2008-03-18T21:48:00.001-04:00

From Crooked Timber:

Readers used to the natural order of things might be concerned by the implication that with such a giveaway price, the top brass at [Bear Stearns] might be forced to bear the financial consequences of events that were obviously beyond their control. Never fear. According to this Reuters report in the Guardian, while most employees up to junior executive levels will lose both their jobs and the shares they were encouraged to buy, with no “golden parachutes:

JPMorgan Chief Financial Officer Mike Cavanagh late Sunday said taking over Bear would generate about $6 billion in merger-related costs.

JPMorgan has not broken down those figures, but much of that will be earmarked for severance pay and potential exit packages for top executives like Schwartz.

A person familiar with the transaction told Reuters that roughly $1 billion of those costs would be earmarked for severance and retention.

Eternal Memory: Metropolitan Laurus

2008-03-16T22:55:00.001-04:00

From ORA ET LABORA:

His Eminence, Metropolitan Laurus of Eastern America and New York, First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, has reposed in the Lord.

From what I have heard, he served the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts on Friday, then felt too ill to perform tonsures later that evening. He was found in his "skete" (his small cell a few hundred yards from the monastery) this morning, having reposed in his sleep.

The Lord chose to receive Vladyka Laurus on the Sunday of Orthodoxy...

Please pray for the soul of the newly-departed servant of God, Metropolitan Laurus.

May his memory be eternal!

Ban All Cars Getting Less Than 35 MPG?

2008-03-16T17:23:00.001-04:00

In the midst of rethinking my own Jeep ownership (20/24 mpg US rating for the Liberty - but I doubt I get that much) I came across this commentary/opinion - via Autopia from Wired.com:

The former head of Royal Dutch Shell has gone way out on a limb and urged the European Union to ban all vehicles that get less than 35 mpg, saying it is the only way to significantly address global climate change and force the auto industry to build more efficient vehicles...

Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, who spent his career working for the giant oil company, says an outright ban is needed because so-called "gas-guzzler" taxes do not work - and aren't fair because they let those with the means to pay them skirt responsibility for reducing greenhouse gas emissions...

Moody-Stuart, who is currently chairman of the mining group Anglo American, says he is a great fan of the free market, "but like most things, they have a failing. Without regulation to channel their power, markets will not deliver things which are of no immediate benefit to the individual making his or her choice, even though they may be beneficial to society."

P.S. I just worked out my most recent gas mileage (US gallons): 12.3 mpg. (And that's with spending almost as much time on a tow truck hook as driving.) Groan.

Enough!

2008-03-16T14:17:00.001-04:00

From RORATE CÆLI:

"At the end of this solemn Celebration, in which we have meditated upon the Passion of Christ, I wish to remember the late Archbishop of Mosul of the Chaldeans, Paulos Faraj Rahho, who died tragically a few days ago. His beautiful testimony of faithfulness to Christ, to the Church, and to his people, whom he had not wanted to leave, despite numerous threats, prompts me to raise a strong and heartfelt cry: enough with the bloodshed, enough with the violence, enough with the hatred in Iraq!
Benedict XVI - Angelus (March 16, 2008)

Eliza Programmer Dead

2008-03-13T17:56:00.001-04:00

From DevTopics:

Joseph Weizenbaum, who invented the famous "virtual psychiatrist" computer program Eliza, died from cancer on March 5 in Groben, Germany at age 85.

> How does that make you feel?

Weizenbaum was a pioneer in computer science and professor at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab, where he created Eliza in 1966.

> Tell me more…

Eliza was a simple question & answer program in the form of today's online chat software. Eliza parodied a Rogerian psycho-therapist, mostly by rephrasing the user/patient's statements as questions and posing them back to the patient. This eliminated the need for a large real-world database.

> I'm not sure I understand you fully.

Eliza foreshadowed the potential of artificial intelligence, but Weizenbaum was stunned to discover how many people became engrossed in conversations with Eliza, even revealing intimate personal details. Over time, Weizenbaum grew skeptical about technology's ability to improve the human condition.

> Can't you be more positive?

In his 1976 book, Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation, Weizenbaum criticized systems that substituted automated decision-making for the human mind. He also believed there were "transcendent qualities in the human experience that could not be duplicated in interactions with machines" such as "the wordless glance that a father and mother share over the bed of their sleeping child." (source)

> What does that suggest to you?

As Theodore Piszak wrote, Weizenbaum's book was "Superb…The work of a man who is struggling with the utmost seriousness to save our humanity from the reductionist onslaught of one of the most prestigious, active, and richly funded technologies of our time."

Try Eliza online

More on Joseph Weizenbaum

How to Make the Time for Your Personal Goals

2008-03-11T20:34:00.001-04:00

From Zen Habits:

“Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.” - Henry Ford

One of the biggest challenges in trying to accomplish any personal goal is that we tend to put them off until tomorrow, or next week, in favor of more pressing matters at work and home. Unfortunately, tomorrow never gets here.

If you want to accomplish a goal, you have to start on it today...

One goal at a time.

Make sure you really want it.

Make it your top priority.

Reduce your commitments.

Keep it simple.

Stay focused.

Block off time.

Make it your most important appointment.

Show that you’re serious.

Find your time wasters.

Make it a part of your daily or weekly routine.

10 ways to improve your code

2008-03-10T20:12:00.001-04:00

A summary of Neil Ford's Software Development West 2008 "advanced code hygiene" presentation, 10 Ways to Improve Your Code, aimed originally at Java programmers, but with wisdom for coders of many [or any!] stripes. (Ford is a senior application architect and "meme wrangler" at ThoughtWorks, an IT consultant that specializes in development and delivery of software, and that is home to object-oriented development, refactoring and agile authority Martin Fowler.) From Reg Developer:

Write the tests before writing the code.
Use static analysis tools.
Practice "good citizenship" by paying attention to how well your objects interact with the outside world. "Never let them exist in an invalid state."
Avoid indulging in speculative software development. "The goal should be to build the simplest thing we need right now."
Simplify essential complexity and kill accidental complexity.
Challenge programming conventions, such as writing long, unreadable test names, and blindly following the JavaBean specification to the detriment of your code.
Embrace single level of abstraction principle (SLAP). From Kent Beck's book Smalltalk Best Practices and Patterns: every public method should be as short as possible, and should consist of steps, each one of which is a private method. "Don't make abstraction leaps in your code."
Leverage existing platforms with languages targeted at specific problems and applications.
Learn every nuance of the languages you're using.
Change your perspective and consider "antiobjects." An antiobject is a kind of object that appears to do the opposite of what we think it should do. The object metaphor sometimes impedes the solution "by making us try to create objects that are too inspired by the real world."

It's the libraries, stupid!

2008-03-10T14:40:00.001-04:00

From Why Apple Will Dominate Next Gen Computing - ReadWriteWeb (by Alex Iskold):

Let's be clear. It is not the language, but the libraries that matter. Every time I hear developers talk about a new language and say it is by far the best one, I just shake my head. A new language is not going to be usable in today's world unless all of the libraries are in place. As the complexity of our software increases, so do demands on libraries. Microsoft learned it the hard way with years of set backs when it rolled out .Net. Had it simply embraced and optimized Java, it could have been years ahead instead.

Apple choose a different path. For the last decade Apple has been wowing the crowds and investors with its flawless and lightening quick execution. Every new Apple announcement, we keep thinking that they won't top it. But every time, Jobs and his crew pulls another trick out of the hat. Clearly, Apple is a well-oiled machine that has perfected the art of execution. But beyond that, Apple's secret sauce has been its software. While others have been inventing new languages and frameworks, Apple kept perfecting and building up its code.

Since the early days, Apple embraced a language called Objective-C - an object-oriented flavor of the popular procedural language. When Jobs returned to Apple, one of the early smart decisions was to ditch the old operating system in favor of Unix. This moved allowed Apple to instantly tap into serious programmers while retaining a beautiful and simple UI. When Java came along, Apple was unmoved, because it was just too slow. In general, over the years Apple has ignored new languages and just stuck with its platform. Smart, disciplined and mature...

Lessons Learned at 37 Signals

2008-03-09T10:11:00.001-04:00

From Sean Ammirati's summary on ReadWriteWeb of a talk by Jason Fried of 37signals at SXSW 2008:

37signals is a software company headquartered in Chicago that started as a interactive design company and has since become one of the leading software companies for personal productivity software. Currently over one million people and businesses use their productivity applications... They also are responsible for creating and then open sourcing the popular web developer language [sic] Ruby on Rails. Jason Fried is the company's founder.

Lesson 1: Ignore The Great Unknown

"...often as entrepreneurs, we worry about the impact of our decisions rather than just making the right decision. ...this is crazy, because decisions made today don't have to last forever - we 'must optimize for today.'"

Lesson 2: Watch Out for Red Flags

Red flags are ... words or phrases that end up causing problems in communications. For example: need, can't, easy, only, fast.

Lesson 3: Be Successful and Make Money by Helping Other People be Successful and Make Money

...This has become part of [37signals'] philosophy, looking for opportunities in the marketplace to "spot chain reactions and be the catalyst" around helping others.

Lesson 4: Target Nonconsumers and Nonconsumption

...The idea [from Clayton Christensen of Harvard Business School] is that there exists an entire market of nonconsumers, or people who have a need but existing players aren't targeting these people. The advantage of targeting this segment is that you minimize the chance for competition from entrenched players.

Lesson 5: Question Your Work Regularly

why are we doing this?

what problem are we solving?

is this actually useful?

are we adding value?

will this change behavior?

is there an easier way?

what's the opportunity cost?

is it really worth it?

Lesson 6: Read your Product

"The biggest sin on the internet right now is bad copywriting ... paying too much attention to pixels and not enough attention to words."

Lesson 7: Err on the Side of Simple

...always "start with the easy way."

Lesson 8: Invest in What Doesn't Change

Lesson 9: Follow the Chefs

Jason called chefs the smartest business professionals. ...they are aware that you become famous and successful by giving knowledge away. For example, chefs have cooking shows and write cook books. Yet it doesn't stop their restaurants from being successful. In fact, he claimed they are probably more successful because of their sharing.

Lesson 10: Interruption is the Enemy of Productivity

Lesson 11: Road Maps Send You in the Wrong Direction

When talking about business plans, financial projections, or features for products 37signals believes road maps are bad, because "they lock you into the past." The only exception is APIs, because people are counting on it. ..."do the right thing at the right time."

Lesson 12: Be Clear in Crisis

At the beginning of this year, 37signals had some infrastructure problems that resulted in a few hours of unscheduled downtime. This was widely discussed on the internet. They quickly posted about what had happened and during the technical problems they kept their homepage updated with status messages. Through this experience, it reinforced their belief that people love you even more if you are open, honest, public and responsive during a crisis.

Lesson 13: Make Tiny Decisions

Rather than trying to make major decisions, when possible, Jason encouraged entrepreneurs to break problems down to the atomic level. In web properties, this is especially powerful because they've been able to break features down to the atomic level and then launch them one at a time. This is good because the team can gain momentum and celebrate little launches. However, it's also good because "when you make tiny decisions, you can't make big mistakes."

Lesson 14: Make it Matter

Jason ended his presentation by encouraging the audience to make sure their work was significant. He talked about how meaningful he felt the products they were creating were for individuals. ..."everything you do should matter."

Interface "Wow" Factor

2008-03-08T10:14:00.001-05:00

From Code Commit:

That’s what it really all comes down to: user perception. Jeff Atwood harps on about this constantly, but just because it’s oft-repeated doesn’t make it less true. It doesn’t matter what your application can do, just what your users think it can do. It’s all an elaborate illusion anyway, we just have to realize how complete that illusion really is. If a user looks at your application and thinks, “Wow! I don’t know what it is, but it looks powerful,” then you have succeeded as a developer. Your application could do nothing more than print “Hello, World!” an infinite number of times; so long as it is impressive looking, it will be a success (think iPhoto 1.0). Likewise, your application may desalinate water and hold the key to world peace, but if it looks wimpy, users will never give it a chance.

How to Find Good Ideas for Business and Life

2008-03-08T10:06:00.001-05:00

Excellent article by Donald Latumahina from Life Optimizer:

There is a lesson ... I learned from the book On Writing Well:

You should always collect more material than you will use. Every article is strong in proportion to the surplus of details from which you can choose the few that will serve you best.

...to find good ideas, you should:

Have as many ideas as possible, and then

Choose the few ideas that serve you best

...here are some steps to find good ideas:

Expect ideas from every situation

Bring a capture tool wherever you go

Don’t filter the ideas you get

After you’ve collected enough ideas, filter them

. . .

Besides collecting as many ideas as possible, it’s good to increase the quality of your input. That way you can have higher-quality ideas to choose from. Here are some tips to increase the quality of input:

Diversify your reading

Choose the most important book to read next

Get the most out of your reading

Surround yourself with positive people

Find a mentor

Use the art of arbitrage and increase your arbitrage power

Software Engineering Goals

2008-03-04T18:28:00.001-05:00

From 72 Miles Software:

Modifiability

Understandability

Reliability

Efficiency

Babies See Pure Color...

2008-03-04T15:55:00.002-05:00

From Wired Science:

Babies See Pure Color, but Adults Peer Through Prism of Language

When infant eyes absorb a world of virgin visions, colors are processed purely, in a pre-linguistic parts of the brain. As adults, colors are processed in the brain's language centers, refracted by the concepts we have for them.

How does that switch take place? And does it affect our subjective experience of color? Such tantalizing questions, their answers still unknown, are raised by this developmental shift in color categorization, described today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences...

Application Development in the "Cloud"

2008-03-04T12:51:00.001-05:00

From an article on GigaOM written by Geva Perry (chief marketing officer at GigaSpace Technologies):

...Although it is difficult to come up with a precise and comprehensive definition of cloud computing, at the heart of it is the idea that applications run somewhere on the “cloud” (whether an internal corporate network or the public Internet) – we don’t know or care where. But as end users, that’s not big news: We’ve been using web applications for years without any concern as to where the applications actually run.

The big news is for application developers and IT operations. Done right, cloud computing allows them to develop, deploy and run applications that can easily grow capacity (scalability), work fast (performance), and never — or at least rarely — fail (reliability), all without any concern as to the nature and location of the underlying infrastructure.

Taken to the next step, this implies that cloud computing infrastructures, and specifically their middleware and application platforms, should ideally have these characteristics:

Self-healing: In case of failure, there will be a hot backup instance of the application ready to take over without disruption (known as failover)...

SLA-driven: The system is dynamically managed by service-level agreements that define policies such as how quickly responses to requests need to be delivered...

Multi-tenancy: The system is built in a way that allows several customers to share infrastructure, without the customers being aware of it and without compromising the privacy and security of each customer’s data.

Service-oriented: The system allows composing applications out of discrete services that are loosely coupled (independent of each other)...

Linearly Scalable: Perhaps the biggest challenge. The system will be predictable and efficient in growing the application. If one server can process 1,000 transactions per second, two servers should be able to process 2,000 transactions per second, and so forth.

Data, Data, Data: The key to many of these aspects is management of the data: its distribution, partitioning, security and synchronization...

What Stanford Learned Building Facebook Apps

2008-03-04T09:59:00.001-05:00

Some of this may be specific to Facebook "apps" ... but, then again, many of these points can easily be applied to "traditional" application development as well. (And should be.) From ReadWriteWeb:

Dr. BJ Fogg and Dave McClure taught a class last semester at Stanford on Building Facebook Applications. In 10 weeks, the 80 students had created 50+ applications and in total had over 20 Million installs - with 5 having more than 1 million users.

At today's Graphing Social Patterns conference, BJ and his two teacher assistants shared 10 tips they learned from the experience. Here they are:

It's never too late to create a winning app

Simplicity & clarity are key to app success

Aim for speed & flexibility in launch and iterations

Community cooperation leads to success (in other words, the most successful students shared the most)

Individual opinion about apps are worthless, you need to get out there and see what happens

Copying success is a cheap / fast way to succeed

Metrics do matter, but today's tools are too weak

You CAN learn to create a winning app

Success comes from the CHAOS / CONTROL Cycle

Mass Interpersonal Persuasion is finally here

Google's Engineering Philosophy

2008-03-02T18:05:00.001-05:00

From Google Operating System:

12 principles that guide programming at Google:

All developers work out of a ~single source depot; shared infrastructure!

A developer can fix bugs anywhere in the source tree.

Building a product takes 3 commands ("get, config, make")

Uniform coding style guidelines across company

Code reviews mandatory for all checkins

Pervasive unit testing, written by developers

Unit tests run continuously, email sent on failure

Powerful tools, shared company-wide

Rapid project cycles; developers change projects often; 20% time

Peer-driven review process; flat management structure

Transparency into projects, code, process, ideas, etc.

Dozens of offices around world => hire best people regardless of location

The March of Progress

2008-03-02T12:43:00.001-05:00

Funny but sad, too - especially if one happened to be programming in those intermediate years. From Cay Horstmann:

1980: C 
	printf("%10.2f", x);
1988: C++
	cout << setw(10) << setprecision(2) << showpoint << x;
1996: Java
	java.text.NumberFormat formatter = java.text.NumberFormat.getNumberInstance(); 
	formatter.setMinimumFractionDigits(2); 
	formatter.setMaximumFractionDigits(2); 
	String s = formatter.format(x); 
	for (int i = s.length(); i < 10; i++) {
		System.out.print(' '); 
		System.out.print(s);
	}
2004: Java
	System.out.printf("%10.2f", x);

Why Programming Languages?

2008-03-02T10:41:00.001-05:00

I like this. From : So Jake Says: "People are the Problem, not Operator Overloading":

...we first need to look at the reasons that programming languages exist.

So that people can efficiently talk to the computer.

So that people can read how other people talk to the computer.

That’s it. There are no more reasons.

How to Start a Start-up

2008-03-01T20:03:00.001-05:00

You need three things to create a successful startup:

to start with good people,
to make something customers actually want,
and to spend as little money as possible.

Most startups that fail do it because they fail at one of these. A startup that does all three will probably succeed.

-- Paul Graham

Night Reader

2008-03-01T19:37:00.001-05:00

About 3-2-1 Launch by Hashrocket

2008-03-01T18:02:00.001-05:00

Hmm. A lot to think about in this post about the development philosophy and methodology of Obie Fernandez' new company Hashrocket. And to learn from. And, if possible, to apply personally.

...my new startup company named Hashrocket. (We are named after the ubiquitous key/value => operator in Ruby.) One of our two principal offerings is called 3-2-1 Launch...

We ... came to the conclusion that a span of 3 days is just enough time to get a new project off the ground - enough to nail down some distinguishing functionality, without sacrificing quality and good looks. Of course, it's not applicable to all projects -- our team of developers is 4-6 people (mostly working in pairs) which limits the amount of complexity we can tackle in one 3-day iteration (which we've taken to calling "orbits").

Here's a quick list of factors that empower us be ultra-productive in 3 days:

Expertise in Ruby, Rails and BDD (using RSpec)

Heavy automation of common tasks (pretty much anything repeatable is automated, including our initial application bootstrap which includes basic functionality such as authentication)

Smart use of web services such as Amazon's EC2 and S3

Reliance on Rails-based web 2.0 tools such as Basecamp, Highrise, Lighthouse, and Beanstalk

The 3 scheduled days (always Mon-Wed) refers strictly to implementation work, specifically the first iteration, ending with a public release of the software. Prior to the 3 days, our contract specifies a time period of 3 weeks during which we agree on detailed specification ... and high-fidelity mockups. What we're looking to achieve is a high level of confidence that we'll be able to launch in 3 days, and that necessarily involves locking down requirements prior to implementation. We've talked about an abort mechanism if anybody on the team thinks we're not going to achieve a successful launch (unveiling) on Thursday. If an abort were to occur, we'd postpone the launch for the next available date (probably the following week) at no additional charge to the client.

UsWare vs. ThemWare

2008-02-29T13:32:00.001-05:00

No comments required. From Coding Horror:

Ted Dennison left this astute comment in response to Do Not Listen to Your Users:

Generally when I go talk to users, it is to educate myself enough to become a user like them. Then I can see what needs doing, what needs streamlining, reorganizing, rearranging, etc.

This brought to mind Eric Sink's claim that there are three categories of software:

MeWare
The developer creates software. The developer uses it. Nobody else does.
ThemWare
The developer creates software. Other people use it. The developer does not.
UsWare
The developer creates software. Other people use it. The developer uses it too.

ThemWare is how most software gets developed, with predictably disastrous results:

If I am building software that I don't use and don't know how to use for people I don't understand or even like, how good is my software going to be?

I probably see every feature in terms of how difficult it will be to implement, rather than how valuable it will be for my users. I probably find myself wanting to label or document the features using my jargon instead of theirs. I probably create features that are tedious or unintuitive for my users. I can't imagine why the user interface I designed doesn't make sense to them.

I've found that much of the best software is the best because the programmers are the users, too. It is UsWare.

It behooves software developers to understand users, to walk a mile in their shoes. If we can bridge the gap between users and ourselves-- even if only a little-- we start slowly converting our mediocre ThemWare into vastly superior UsWare. To really care about the software you're writing, you have to become a user, at least in spirit.

Consuming the software you're creating is colloquially known as dogfooding in programming circles. Unless you're (un)lucky enough to be writing software intended for other software developers, dogfooding can be a challenge. But it's worth it. Dogfooding keeps software developers honest. Why work against your users by producing ThemWare when you could work alongside them to build UsWare?

Hermann Goering on "good government"

2008-02-29T12:20:00.001-05:00

Sobering. Via 1-800-MAGIC:

"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."

"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."

"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

G.M. Gilbert, Nuremberg Diary.

Obama's "Biggest Mistake"

2008-02-29T09:06:00.001-05:00

From LifeSite News:

Obama: "Biggest Mistake" Was Vote to Help Terri Schiavo

By Peter J. Smith
LifeSiteNews.com

WASHINGTON, D.C., February 28, 2008 - Barack Obama, the young, dynamic contender for the US Democratic presidential nomination, is continuing to send strong signals to members of his party that he is the strongest anti-life candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.

At the last Democratic debate before the March 4 primary showdown in Texas and Ohio that could effectively decide the Democratic nominee, both Sen. Hillary Clinton - a fierce abortion supporter who is aspiring to be the first female president of the United States - and Sen. Obama - who is vying to be the first black US President - were asked which votes they would take back in their senatorial careers. Clinton cited her vote for the Iraq war; Obama said his vote for Terri Schiavo.

"It wasn't something I was comfortable with, but it was not something that I stood on the floor and stopped. And I think that was a mistake," Obama said at the debate. "And as a constitutional law professor, I knew better ... and I think that's an example of inaction, and sometimes that can be as costly as action."

Obama was referring to his vote in March 2005, when the Senate passed a bill by unanimous consent that permitted Schiavo's parents and brother to make their case before federal courts to keep their brain-injured daughter alive via feeding tube...

'Nuff said.

Makes one want to weep...

Six Principles for Making New Things

2008-02-28T20:44:00.001-05:00

More great stuff from Paul Graham:

Here it is: I like to find (a) simple solutions (b) to overlooked problems (c) that actually need to be solved, and (d) deliver them as informally as possible, (e) starting with a very crude version 1, then (f) iterating rapidly.

When I first laid out these principles explicitly, I noticed something striking: this is practically a recipe for generating a contemptuous initial reaction. Though simple solutions are better, they don't seem as impressive as complex ones. Overlooked problems are by definition problems that most people think don't matter. Delivering solutions in an informal way means that instead of judging something by the way it's presented, people have to actually understand it, which is more work. And starting with a crude version 1 means your initial effort is always small and incomplete.

I'd noticed, of course, that people never seemed to grasp new ideas at first. I thought it was just because most people were stupid. Now I see there's more to it than that. Like a contrarian investment fund, someone following this strategy will almost always be doing things that seem wrong to the average person.

As with contrarian investment strategies, that's exactly the point. This technique is successful (in the long term) because it gives you all the advantages other people forgo by trying to seem legit. If you work on overlooked problems, you're more likely to discover new things, because you have less competition. If you deliver solutions informally, you (a) save all the effort you would have had to expend to make them look impressive, and (b) avoid the danger of fooling yourself as well as your audience. And if you release a crude version 1 then iterate, your solution can benefit from the imagination of nature, which, as Feynman pointed out, is more powerful than your own.

...

Reddit is a classic example of this approach. When Reddit first launched, it seemed like there was nothing to it. To the graphically unsophisticated its deliberately minimal design seemed like no design at all. But Reddit solved the real problem, which was to tell people what was new and otherwise stay out of the way. As a result it became massively successful. Now that conventional ideas have caught up with it, it seems obvious. People look at Reddit and think the founders were lucky. Like all such things, it was harder than it looked. The Reddits pushed so hard against the current that they reversed it; now it looks like they're merely floating downstream.

So when you look at something like Reddit and think "I wish I could think of an idea like that," remember: ideas like that are all around you. But you ignore them because they look wrong.

37signals Featured in Wired (March 2008 issue)

2008-02-28T20:29:00.001-05:00

Some [important, I believe] items to consider from 37signals' reaction to an article in Wired entitled The Brash Boys at 37signals Will Tell You: Keep it Simple, Stupid:

Myth: Whoever spends the most wins

What’s more, 37signals’ ideological objections to outside funding could make them less able to withstand competition. Nicholas Carr, author of The Big Switch, says companies like 37signals won’t have the resources to fight should larger firms with huge economies of scale and backend infrastructure decide to take them on. “They’re going to have a very tough challenge,” he says.

We continue to find this argument flawed. First of all, a few rounds of VC millions won’t put us on equal footing with bazillion dollar giants like Google, Microsoft, or other masters of economies of scale.

Second of all, we’re not in the winner-take-all software world of the 90’s anymore. Thanks to the web, there’s plenty of room for lots of companies, ideas, and products to flourish. The behemoth model isn’t the only game in town. There’s plenty of opportunity, success, and profitability to go around.

Lastly, we think our biggest competitor is habit—people using the phone, email, paper, pencils, post-it notes, and fax machines. These are the people we want to win over. We believe the simple software we’re building is the best way to do it.

Technology Populism: Risks & Rewards

2008-02-28T18:39:00.001-05:00

A very interesting and thought-provoking (if long-ish) article about "technology populism" at ReadWriteWeb:

According to a new report by Forrester Research, Inc., Technology Populism is defined as "an adoption trend led by a technology-native workforce that self provisions collaborative tools, information sources, and human networks — requiring minimal or no ongoing support from a central IT organization."

For the layperson, this definition can be boiled down to this: more and more people are functioning as their own IT department at work.

Google ‘Not-Office’ Finally Completed

2008-02-28T17:38:00.001-05:00

From All Things Digital:

...Soldiering on in its quest not to compete with Microsoft’s (MSFT) core office-productivity software business [ha-ha!], Google (GOOG) last night [27 Feb 2008] added another component to its Web-based productivity suite–Google Sites. Created from JotSpot, the hosted wiki platform Google acquired back in 2006, Sites is essentially a lightweight version of Microsoft’s business-collaboration program SharePoint. It offers organizations a means of instantly creating a wiki-style group workspace, in which employees can collaborate.

It’s another powerful addition to the Google Apps suite, which already includes Gmail, Google Calendar, Talk, Docs and Spreadsheets and Page Creator. And it’s free. And if you think of “free” as a euphemism for “not robust enough for enterprise use,” you best think again. At least that’s what Google says, anyway. “The so-called lightweight cloud application isn’t for the non-power user,” Matt Glotzbach, product management director for Google Enterprise, told News.com’s Dan Farber. “It’s actually for the power user. Today’s power users aren’t writing macros. They are ‘power collaborators,’ grabbing content from six different places in the cloud and putting [it] on a site and sharing it.”

"The lightweight cloud application", eh? Hmm....

A Fifth of the Good Stuff

2008-02-28T09:03:00.001-05:00

Mike Aquilina - on his The Way of the Fathers blog - today offers us a translation of the fifth and concluding part of Pope Benedict's weekly meditations on St Augustine. (Apparently, in Rome, "there were so many pilgrims that the overflow had to be gathered into St. Peter's!") As always with this great pastor and theologian, there is much of an inspirational nature to consider:

Today I would like to conclude my presentation of St. Augustine. After having dwelt on his life, his works, and some aspects of his thought, I wish to go back today to his interior life which made him one of the greatest converts in Christian history.

To this interior experience, I particularly devoted my reflections during the pilgrimage I made to Pavia last year to venerate the mortal remains of this Father of the Church. I wanted to express the homage of the entire Catholic Church but also to show my personal devotion and acknowledgment of a figure to whom I feel very much connected for the part that he has played in my life as a theologian, priest and pastor.

Even today we can retrace the experiences of St. Augustine, thanks above all to his Confessions, written in praise of God and which originated one of the most specific literary forms of the West, the autobiography, that is, a personal expression of one's consciousness about oneself.

Whoever reads this extraordinary and fascinating book, which is still widely read today, will easily realize that Augustine's conversion was neither sudden nor fully realized immediately, but that it could be better defined as a true and proper journey, which remains a model for each of us.

This itinerary certainly culminated in his conversion and baptism, but it did not end on that Easter Vigil of 387 when the African rhetorician was baptized by Bishop Ambrose in Milan.

Augustine's journey of conversion, in fact, continued humbly until the end of his life, so that one can say that its various stages - one can easily distinguish three - made up a unique act of conversion.

St. Augustine was a passionate searcher for the truth - he was from the very beginning and all his life. The first stage of his journey of conversion was his progressively coming close to Christianity. Actually, he received a Christian education from his mother Monica, to whom he was always closely linked, and although he led an undisciplined life in his youth, he always felt a profound attraction to Christ, having drunk love for the name of the Lord with his mother's milk, as he himself underscored (cfr Confessiones, III, 4, 8).

But philosophy, too, especially Platonic, contributed to bring him closer to Christ by showing him the existence of the Logos, creative reason. The philosophers' books showed him that there was Reason, from which the whole world sprung, but they did not tell him how to reach this Logos which seemed so remote.

Only reading about the faith of the Catholic Church in St. Paul's letters revealed the truth fully to him. This experience was synthesized by Augustine in one of the most famous pages of the Confessions: He recounts that, in the torment of his reflections, he retired to a garden, where suddenly he heard a child's voice which repeated to him a lullaby he had never heard before, "Tolle, legge, tolle, legge" (Take and read, take and read) (VIII, 20,29).

He then remembered the conversion of St. Anthony Abbot, the father of monasticism, and with great urgency, he turned to the Pauline epistolary which he had in his hands earlier, opened it, and his glance fell on the passage from the Letter to the Romans where the Apostle exhorts the Romans to abandon the ways of the flesh and "put on the Lord Jesus Christ" (13, 13-14).

He understood that at that moment, those words were addressed to him, that it came from God through the Apostle, and showed him what to do right then. Thus, he felt the shadows of doubt dissolve and he found himself finally free to give himself completely to Christ: "You converted my being to you", he commented (Confessiones, VIII, 12,30). This was his first and decisive conversion.

The African rhetorician reached this fundamental stage of his long journey, thanks to his passion for man and for the truth, a passion which brought him to look for God, great and seemingly inaccessible. Faith in Christ made him understand that God, apparently so remote, was really not. In fact, that he had made himself close to us by becoming one of us.

In this sense, faith in Christ fulfilled Augustine's long search along the path of truth. Only a God who made himself "tangible", one of us, was a God to whom one could pray, for whom and with whom one could live. But it is a way to follow with courage as well as humility, opening us to a permanent purification of which each of us is always in need.

With that Easter Vigil Baptism of 387, as we said earlier, Augustine's journey was not done. He returned to Africa where he retired with a few friends to dedicate themselves to a life of contemplation and study. This was the dream of his life. He was called to live totally for the truth, with the truth, in friendship with Christ who is the Truth.

It was a beautiful dream that lasted three years, until when, against his wishes, he was consecrated a priest in Hippo, destined to serve the faithful, continuing to live with Christ and for Christ, but in the service of all.

This was very difficult for him, but he understood from the beginning that only by living for others, and not only for his private gratification, could he really live with Christ and for Christ. Thus, renouncing a life of pure meditation, Augustine learned, often with difficulty, to offer the fruit of his intelligence for the benefit of others.

He learned to communicate his faith to simple people, and living that way in what became his city, he carried out tirelessly a generous and onerous service that he described in these words in one of his beautiful sermons: "To preach continuously, discuss, reiterate, edify, be at the disposal of everyone - it is an enormous responsibility, a great weight, an immense effort" (Serm. 339,4).

But he took this weight on himself, understanding that this way, he was closest to Christ. To understand that one reaches others with simplicity and humility was his true and second conversion.

But there is a third stage in the Augustinian journey, a third conversion: that which brought him every day of his life to ask God's forgiveness. Initially, he had thought that once he was baptized - in a life of communion with Christ, in the Sacraments, in the celebration of the Eucharist - he would attain the life proposed in the Sermon on the Mount: the perfection given in Baptism and reconfirmed in the Eucharist.

In the latter part of his life, he understood that what he had said in his first preachings about the Sermon on the Mount - that is, that we Christians would thereafter live that ideal permanently - was wrong. That only Christ himself was the true and complete realization of the Sermon on the Mount.

We are all always in need of being "washed" by Christ, who washes our feet, and to be renewed by him. We need permanent continuing conversion. Up to the end we need the humility to recognize that we are sinners on a journey, until the Lord gives us his hand conclusively and introduces us to eternal life. In such an attitude of humility, lived day after day, Augustine died.

This attitude of profound humility before the one Lord Jesus introduced him also to the experience of intellectual humility. Augustine, in fact, who is one of the greatest figures in the history of ideas, wished during his final years to place all his numerous works under lucid critical examination.

That was the origin of Retractiones (Revisions) which, in this way, placed his theological thinking, which was truly great, within the humble and holy faith of what he called simply with the name Catholic, that is, the Church.

"I understood," he wrote in this very original book (I, 19,1-3), "that only one is truly perfect, and that the words of the Sermon on the Mount are completely realized only in one - in Jesus Christ himself. The whole Church, instead - all of us, including the Apostles - must pray every day: forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us."

Converted to Christ, who is truth and love, Augustine followed him the rest of his life and has become a model for every human being, for all of us in search of God.

That is why I wished to conclude my pilgrimage to Pavia by symbolically offering to the Church and to the world, at the tomb of this great lover of God, my first encyclical, Deus caritas est.

In fact, the encyclical owes a great deal, especially in the first part, to the thought of St. Augustine. Even today, as in his time, mankind needs to recognize, and above all, to live, this fundamental reality: God is love, and the encounter with him is the only response to the anxieties of the human heart. A heart that is inhabited by hope, perhaps still obscure and even unconscious in many of our contemporaries, but which for us Christians, already opens the future, such that St. Paul wrote, "in hope we are saved" (Rom 8,24).

I dedicated my second encyclical, Spe salvi, to hope, and even that owes a great deal to Augustine's thoughts and his encounter with God.

In a very beautiful text, Augustine defined prayer as the expression of desire, and stated that God responds by opening up our hearts to him. On our part, we should purify our desires and our hopes in order to receive the kindness of God (cfr In I Ioannis, 4, 6). Only this, in fact, opening us up to others, saves us.

Let us pray therefore that in our life we may be granted to follow everyday the example of this great convert, encountering like him, in every moment of our life, the Lord Jesus, the only one who saves us, purifies us, and gives us true joy and true life.

Continuous Integration

2008-02-27T11:56:00.001-05:00

"Continuous Integration is a software development practice where members of a team integrate their work frequently, usually each person integrates at least daily - leading to multiple integrations per day. Each integration is verified by an automated build (including test) to detect integration errors as quickly as possible. Many teams find that this approach leads to significantly reduced integration problems and allows a team to develop cohesive software more rapidly."

-- Martin Fowler

The Fallacy of 100% Code Coverage

2008-02-27T11:47:00.001-05:00

Re: Testing (TDD, BDD, etc.) ... from Binstock on Software [yes, again! ;-)]:

So, let's start at the foundational level: 100% code coverage is a fallacious goal. Unit testing is designed to provide two principal benefits: 1) validate the operation of code; 2) create sensors that can detect when code operation has changed, thereby identifying unanticipated effects of code changes. There is no point in writing tests that do not fulfill one of the two goals. Consequently, a getter or setter [i.e. "properties" in the .NET world] should not be the target of a unit test:
public void setHeight( float newHeight ) 
	{ height = newHeight; }
This code cannot go wrong (unless you believe that your language's assignment operator doesn't work consistently ;-). Likewise, there is no benefit in a test as a sensor here. The operation of this code cannot change. Hence, any time spent writing a unit test for this routine is wasted.

Excellent Explanation of Dependency Injection (Inversion of Control)

2008-02-27T11:37:00.001-05:00

From Binstock on Software:

...Here is clearest explanation I've found--slightly edited for brevity (from the very good Spring in Action, 2nd. Ed. by Craig Walls):

"Any nontrivial application is made up of two or more classes that collaborate with each other to perform some business logic. Traditionally, each object is responsible for obtaining its own references to the objects it collaborates with (its dependencies). When applying DI, the objects are given their dependencies at creation time by some external entity that coordinates each object in the system. In other words, dependencies are injected into objects."

I find that very clear.

Dependency Injection was originally called Inversion of Control (IoC) because the normal control sequence would be the object finds the objects it depends on by itself and then calls them. Here, this is reversed: The dependencies are handed to the object when it's created. This also illustrates the Hollywood Principle at work: Don't call around for your dependencies, we'll give them to you when we need you.

If you don't use DI, you're probably wondering why it's a big deal. It delivers a key advantage: loose coupling. Objects can be added and tested independently of other objects, because they don't depend on anything other than what you pass them. When using traditional dependencies, to test an object you have to create an environment where all of its dependencies exist and are reachable before you can test it. With DI, it's possible to test the object in isolation passing it mock objects for the ones you don't want or need to create. Likewise, adding a class to a project is facilitated because the class is self-contained, so this avoids the "big hairball" that large projects often evolve into...

Build One To Throw Away, You Will Anyhow

2008-02-27T10:01:00.001-05:00

From Knowing.NET:

Such [i.e. the title: "Build one to throw away, you will anyhow"] was one of the many pieces of advice of Fred Brooks in The Mythical Man-Month and while others of Brooks aphorisms have stood the test of time, completely scrapping a codebase is today seen more as an aberration than a painful but necessary part of the process.

Andrew Binstock, who's been developing a modern typesetting language (a TeX for the new millennium), has decided to do just that with his 20K LoC, multiple man-year codebase. His recognition that "the more I code, the more I see that I am adding top floors to a leaning tower. Eventually I'll topple it" may seem startling coming from a vocal advocate of unit-testing, especially to younger developers who probably have had pretty-good success developing Web-based applications.

Andrew pinpoints the critical issue:

It's extremely difficult to figure out where your architecture is deficient if you have never done the kind of project you're currently undertaking.

Nowadays, most of us do our professional programming in pretty well-worn niches -- Web-based database-driven this, Smart-client semi-connected that, etc. Because of that, we (or our team) tend to make pretty good architectural choices. So good, in fact, that nowadays you don't hear nearly as much concern about application architecture as used to be the case. So good, in fact, that lots of people think you can refactor your way out of the wrong architecture; Andrew's decision is surely painful, but I think it's vastly less painful than architectural refactoring...

Just a quick follow-up... Here's the direct link to Andrew Binstock's blog posting: Restarting the Platypus and the Lessons Learned. Based on a remarkably clear-sighted forensic autopsy of his own project (surely not an easy thing to do!) Binstock enumerates a number of valuable lessons - in addition to the one noted above. E.g. "When it comes to modularity for input and output processing, plug-ins are an excellent design model," and "Unit testing delivers extra value when you're writing difficult code."

Yes, very much worth reading. And absorbing.

A Hierarchical Word on End-Times Fanatics

2008-02-26T09:06:00.002-05:00

From Western Orthodoxy:

The real meaning of the English word "Gospel" is good news, but one can find those who are more attracted to the Bad News Gospel. You can find religious circles more interested in the anti-Christ than in Christ, more interested in the number 666 than the Holy Trinity. This is a fear-driven, bad news orientation. Where such a mentality thrives, the Christian contribution to society is meager. Where faith, hope and love flourish, transformation occurs. Faith changes life. If life doesn't change, clearly there is no faith. St. John Chrysostom, preaching to perhaps 400 people in Antioch, told them, "If all of you were Christians, there would be no more pagans in the world." If you want to understand how Christianity spread so rapidly in the early centuries, it was because Christians were Christian...

This is our tragedy because more than ever the world needs the light of Christ, the genuine light.

-- Metropolitan JOHN [Pelushi] of Korça, Albanian Orthodox Church.

No more drama

2008-02-25T08:42:00.001-05:00

Ahem and cough-cough... We now interrupt this highly [not to say deadly] serious blog for a brief commentary from the world of sports - via ESPN:

Maple Leafs' Sundin stands pat, refuses to waive no-trade clause

We had to get out a whole box of hankies after reading and listening to all of the folks who felt bad Sundin has been put in such an awful predicament heading into the trade deadline.

Never mind that he's a multi-millionaire who has never once taken his team to the Stanley Cup finals.

We did, however, enjoy the response to our suggestion last week that if Sundin doesn't waive his no-trade clause to facilitate a move to a contender, Leafs interim GM Cliff Fletcher should strip Sundin of his captaincy and make it clear the veteran forward won't be re-signed this summer. Only in Toronto, where reality is, like the Stanley Cup, an infrequent visitor, is such a suggestion met with such horror from media and fans alike.

But that's always been the problem in Toronto, where fans and media have often had trouble separating the myths of the past from the hopelessness of their present. Witness the joyousness that greeted the return of much-loved hero Wendel Clark late in his career (no matter that it cost the team valuable futures), or even when Doug Gilmour made his ill-fated return to the team late in his career before the lockout.

Now, it seems everyone, from media to fans to even Sundin himself, would rather embrace the comfort of mediocrity than take the hard steps that always precede becoming a winner.

Hand me another hanky, please.

-- Scott Burnside

A Great Program

2008-02-22T21:51:00.000-05:00

From The Programmer's Paradox: Fundamental Coding Issues:

The secret to great code is to get the smallest program possible without resorting to being clever, while generalizing to as large a problem space as possible given the time constraints. Make all of the broad strokes explicit, while making all of the details implicit. Get this right, keep it clean and consistent, and you've got elegance.

Holding a Program in One's Head

2008-02-22T15:41:00.002-05:00

Wow! And especially so since I just finished listening to a Scott Hanselman Computer Zen podcast with Dr Michio Kaku on how theoretical physicists think and work - visualizing their problem spaces in their heads ... because the problems they're working on can't be expressed, stored or solved on computers. So, yeah, wow! In any case, more from Paul Graham:

A good programmer working intensively on his own code can hold it in his mind the way a mathematician holds a problem he's working on. Mathematicians don't answer questions by working them out on paper the way schoolchildren are taught to. They do more in their heads: they try to understand a problem space well enough that they can walk around it the way you can walk around the memory of the house you grew up in. At its best programming is the same. You hold the whole program in your head, and you can manipulate it at will.

...

Your code is your understanding of the problem you're exploring. So it's only when you have your code in your head that you really understand the problem.

It's not easy to get a program into your head. If you leave a project for a few months, it can take days to really understand it again when you return to it. Even when you're actively working on a program it can take half an hour to load into your head when you start work each day. And that's in the best case. Ordinary programmers working in typical office conditions never enter this mode. Or to put it more dramatically, ordinary programmers working in typical office conditions never really understand the problems they're solving.

Even the best programmers don't always have the whole program they're working on loaded into their heads. But there are things you can do to help:

Avoid distractions

Work in long stretches

Use succinct languages

Keep rewriting your program

Write readable code

Work in small groups

Don't have multiple people editing the same piece of code

Start small

The Zen of Python

2008-02-22T14:33:00.001-05:00

Hmm. You [can] learn something new - and wonderful! - every day. From Word Aligned:

The Zen of Python is so short I can include it here in its entirety. Typing "import this" in an interpreted session [of Python] gives a pythonic spin on “Hello, world”.

>>> import this
The Zen of Python, by Tim Peters

Beautiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better than implicit.
Simple is better than complex.
Complex is better than complicated.
Flat is better than nested.
Sparse is better than dense.
Readability counts.
Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
Although practicality beats purity.
Errors should never pass silently.
Unless explicitly silenced.
In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch.
Now is better than never.
Although never is often better than *right* now.
If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea.
If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.
Namespaces are one honking great idea -- let's do more of those!

Hofstadter’s rule

2008-02-22T12:09:00.002-05:00

As documented in "Five steps to enlightened expectations" on TechRepublic:

Everything takes longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter’s rule into account.

Quote of the Day - Fulton J. Sheen

2008-02-22T08:50:00.001-05:00

From Dawn Eden's The Dawn Patrol via Father Gregory Jensen's Koinonia:

"One way to make enemies and antagonize people is to challenge the spirit of the world. The world has a spirit, as each age has a spirit. There are certain unanalyzed assumptions which govern the conduct of the world. Anyone who challenges these worldly maxims, such as, 'you only live once,' 'get as much out of life as you can,' 'who will ever know about it?' 'what is sex for if not for pleasure?' is bound to make himself unpopular...

"To marry one age is to be a widow in the next. Because [Jesus Christ] suited no age, He was the model for all ages."

— Fulton J. Sheen, Life of Christ

Research Supports The Effectiveness of TDD

2008-02-21T17:48:00.001-05:00

From you've been HAACKED:

My favorite part of [a paper published in the Proceedings of the IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering entitled On the Effectiveness of Test-first Approach to Programming] is the section in which they offer their explanations for why they believe that Test-First programming might offer productivity benefits. I won’t dock them for using the word synergistic.

We believe that the observed productivity advantage of Test-First subjects is due to a number of synergistic effects:

Better task understanding. Writing a test before implementing the underlying functionality requires the programmer to express the functionality unambiguously.

Better task focus. Test-First advances one test case at a time. A single test case has a limited scope. Thus, the programmer is engaged in a decomposition process in which larger pieces of functionality are broken down to smaller, more manageable chunks. While developing the functionality for a single test, the cognitive load of the programmer is lower.

Faster learning. Less productive and coarser decomposition strategies are quickly abandoned in favor of more productive, finer ones.

Lower rework effort. Since the scope of a single test is limited, when the test fails, rework is easier. When rework immediately follows a short burst of testing and implementation activity, the problem context is still fresh in the programmer’s mind. With a high number of focused tests, when a test fails, the root cause is more easily pinpointed. In addition, more frequent regression testing shortens the feedback cycle. When new functionality interferes with old functionality, this situation is revealed faster. Small problems are detected before they become serious and costly.

Test-First also tends to increase the variation in productivity. This effect is attributed to the relative difficulty of the technique, which is supported by the subjects’ responses to the post-questionnaire and by the observation that higher skill subjects were able to achieve more significant productivity benefits.

So while I don’t expect that those who are resistant or disparaging of TDD will suddenly change their minds on TDD, I am encouraged by this result as it jives with my own experience. The authors do cite several other studies (future reading material, woohoo!) that for the most part support the benefits of TDD.

So while I’m personally convinced of the benefits of TDD and feel the evidence thus far supports that, I do agree that the evidence is not yet overwhelming. More research is required.

I prefer to take a provisional approach to theories, ready to change my mind if the evidence supports it. Though in this case, I find TDD a rather pleasant fun enjoyable method for writing code. There would have to be a massive amount solid evidence that TDD is a colossal waste of time for me to drop it.

Paul Graham

2008-02-21T16:26:00.001-05:00

Oh, BTW, who the heck is this Paul Graham character I've been busily quoting the past couple of days?

From Wikipedia:

In 1995 Graham and Robert Morris founded Viaweb, the first ASP. Viaweb's software, originally written mostly in Common Lisp, allowed users to make their own Internet stores. In the summer of 1998 Viaweb was sold to Yahoo! for 455,000 shares of Yahoo! stock, valued at $49.6 million. At Yahoo! the product became Yahoo! Store.

He has since begun writing essays for his popular website paulgraham.com...

And from the Bio on his own web site:

Paul Graham is an essayist, programmer, and programming language designer. In 1995 he developed with Robert Morris the first web-based application, Viaweb, which was acquired by Yahoo in 1998. In 2002 he described a simple Bayesian spam filter that inspired most current filters. He's currently working on a new programming language called Arc, a new book on startups, and is one of the partners in Y Combinator.

Paul is the author of On Lisp (Prentice Hall, 1993), ANSI Common Lisp (Prentice Hall, 1995), and Hackers & Painters (O'Reilly, 2004). He has an AB from Cornell and a PhD in Computer Science from Harvard, and studied painting at RISD and the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence.

So there!

Succinctness is Power

2008-02-20T22:50:00.001-05:00

And even more from Paul Graham:

The true test of a [programming] language is how well you can discover and solve new problems, not how well you can use it to solve a problem someone else has already formulated.

...

Ultimately, I think you have to go with your gut. What does it feel like to program in the language? I think the way to find (or design) the best language is to become hypersensitive to how well a language lets you think, then choose/design the language that feels best.

Aha! You know, I think I'm starting to see why Ruby has become so popular with really good programmers/hackers. Hmm....

Great Hackers

2008-02-20T22:47:00.001-05:00

Another great quote from Paul Graham:

So here is my best shot at a recipe. If it is possible to make yourself into a great hacker, the way to do it may be to make the following deal with yourself: you never have to work on boring projects (unless your family will starve otherwise), and in return, you'll never allow yourself to do a half-assed job.

Good and Bad Procrastination

2008-02-20T22:40:00.001-05:00

From Paul Graham's wonderful discourse on procrastination this bit stood out like a diamond in the sun:

In his famous essay You and Your Research (which I recommend to anyone ambitious, no matter what they're working on), Richard Hamming suggests that you ask yourself three questions:

What are the most important problems in your field?

Are you working on one of them?

Why not?

Hamming was at Bell Labs when he started asking such questions. In principle anyone there ought to have been able to work on the most important problems in their field. Perhaps not everyone can make an equally dramatic mark on the world; I don't know; but whatever your capacities, there are projects that stretch them. So Hamming's exercise can be generalized to:

What's the best thing you could be working on, and why aren't you?

If Something Seems Boring, Skip It

2008-02-20T14:04:00.001-05:00

A BIG note to self. (More from Matt Blodgett's Dev Blog):

...I tried two tactics to increase the amount of money I could charge for my programming services. One of them failed spectacularly, and one of them succeeded wonderfully. The failure was learning the skills that had the most job posts; the success was learning the skills that most engaged my own curiosity. I learned Java and got nothing out of it; I studied Bayesian filtering for fun and did consulting work in Bayesian filtering through my activity on a Ruby mailing list.

...

The moral here is that if something seems boring, skip it. Trust your intuition.

- Giles Bowkett

Matt Blodgett on Software Development

2008-02-20T13:42:00.001-05:00

These are so good that I had to post them here ... from Matt Blodgett's Dev Blog:

Blodgett's First Law of Software Development:

A development process that involves any amount of tedium will eventually be done poorly or not at all.

Corollaries to Blodgett's First Law:

Any step in a process that could be automated must be automated.

Any code that could be generated must be generated.

A good developer has a built-in tedium detector that's extremely sensitive.

Great developers feel a moral obligation to eliminate tedium.

Tedium indicates a flaw in your process.

A good developer will refuse to do boring work.

A good developer is lazy.

It's foolish to force your best developers to do boring work.

Prefer unit tests over comments.

Dynamic languages will eventually win.

Ruby on Rails is popular because it ruthlessly eliminates tedium from web development.

"Don't Repeat Yourself" might be the most important and fundamental principle in software development.

Duty Calls

2008-02-20T09:05:00.001-05:00

From xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall Munroe:

Ah, so true. So true!

RE: XML...

2008-02-20T08:42:00.001-05:00

From Don Box's Spoutlet:

XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it.

Ha! And I'm sure my former colleagues at Changepoint/Compuware will be wagging their heads knowingly at me, the XML-oclast, for even daring to post this quote.

Free Screen Cleaner

2008-02-18T15:46:00.001-05:00

From LOL: The Life of Leo ... too cute!

Ten Tips for a (Slightly) Less Awful Resume

2008-02-18T13:52:00.001-05:00

From Stevey's Blog Rants:

Today's scientific question is: why are the resumes of programmers so uniformly awful? And how do we fix them?...

Tip #1: Nobody cares about you

Tip #2: Use Plain Text

Tip #3: Check, please!

Tip #4: Avoid Weasel Words

Tip #5: Avoid Wank Words

Tip #6: Don't be a Certified Loser

Tip #7: Don't say "expert" unless you really mean it

Tip #8: Don't tip your hand

Tip #9: Don't bore us to death

Tip #10: Don't be a lying scumbag

In fact, read the entire rant (at Stevey's link above) ... much valuable information direct from the guy who apparently put/left "Objective: Obtain a position at IBM" in his resume when first applying for a job at Amazon.com

"Crackpot Technologies" That Could Shake Up IT

2008-02-18T09:35:00.002-05:00

Nanotechnology
Optical computing
Pervasive computing
Wireless power
The $100 laptop
Direct brain interfaces
Enterprise supercomputing
Virtual worlds

From Infoworld

Fast Forwarding & Fast Free

2008-02-18T09:11:00.001-05:00

I realize that the Western Church has been "enjoying" Lent for a couple of weeks already but, now, the Eastern Churches (and all those who follow the "Orthodox" Paschalion - with Pascha (Easter) falling on 27 April this year) are starting to gear up for their Lent as well. The season of the Lenten Triodion began yesterday (Sun 17 Feb) with the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee.

From ORTHODIXIE via Matushka Ann Lardas:

Whatever calender you use, if you're Orthodox, this is a fast free week, so that when we eat our ice cream on Wednesday and pizza on Friday we will remember that we sin like the Publican more than we fast like the Pharisee, so we should be humble like the first -- and fast like the second.

Next week is the last normal week till after Bright Week. Wednesday and Fridays are fast days but we can have meat the other days.

The next week is Cheese Fare week, when Wednesday and Friday are NOT fast days but we don't have meat all week in anticipation of the fast.

Then, BAM! Clean Monday comes, and Lent is upon us.

But for this week, enjoy.

---
Some Fasting Guidelines as Prescribed by the Orthodox Church

About the Benedictines

2008-02-17T10:33:00.001-05:00

Part of an interview with Fr Giles, a monk of Pluscarden Abbey in Scotland - from The Hermeneutic of Continuity.

Top 10 tips for becoming the best blogger ever

2008-02-17T09:30:00.002-05:00

From CodeThinked:

1) Make promises you can't keep - I promise if you read this blog every day you'll be the best programmer ever in one year!

2) Make statements and claims that you can't possibly defend - no one is more popular than the guy who is constantly saying ridiculous crap. (Can you say Bill O'Reilly?)

3) Make inflammatory posts about other bloggers (preferably those whose blogs are already popular) - Your popularity will skyrocket once the other blogger posts his/her "that guy is a douchebag" response post.

4) Insert completely pointless and totally off-topic images into your posts - My favorite is the staircase.

5) Reference rules and statistics that are completely made up - In reality though, I've heard that only about 20% of bloggers actually do this.

6) Brag about how much money your ads bring in - Mine? Oh, I have earned 6 bucks so far this month. Take that!

7) Go out of your way to offend an entire group of people - For example "windows users", "Republicans", "Democrats", "Grandmothers" or pretty much anyone who holds different views than yours.

8) Post 18 times a day - Sure, go ahead and made a post about what you had for breakfast, then you can make another one later about what it was like coming out! Oh, and that guy who cut you off on the way to work, you should blog about that too.

9) Ask questions with no answers - You really should ask your users questions that no one can answer but everyone thinks they can. Will doing this really make you popular?

10) Make top 10 lists - no one will ever take you seriously unless you can fit all of your opinions into bullet points.

The definition of insanity

2008-02-17T09:15:00.001-05:00

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

– Benjamin Franklin

And the 14 Grand Engineering Challenges of the 21st Century Are...

2008-02-16T14:56:00.002-05:00

From Wired Science:

Make solar energy affordable.
Provide energy from fusion.
Develop carbon sequestration methods.
Manage the nitrogen cycle.
Provide access to clean water.
Restore and improve urban infrastructure.
Advance health informatics.
Engineer better medicines.
Reverse-engineer the brain.
Prevent nuclear terror.
Secure cyberspace.
Enhance virtual reality.
Advance personalized learning.
Engineer the tools for scientific discovery.

Don Cherry

2008-02-15T15:48:00.003-05:00

A very nice commentary by Howard Berger:

Millions of people watch Don Cherry in his Coach's Corner segment each Saturday on Hockey Night In Canada. Perhaps 2% of TV viewers have ever met the man. As a result, 98% of those tuning in wouldn't realize that Cherry's presentation is mostly schtick. A dog-and-pony act with Ron MacLean that both men understand is a magnet for hockey watchers. And an absolute ratings bonanza for the CBC. The part of Cherry that is lesser known and acknowledged is his warm, caring nature. He'll do almost anything for charity, or for an ill person that is brought to his attention.

Several years ago, the father of one of my friends was dying of cancer, and my buddy wondered if Cherry might have time to give the man a call. The dying person was a big fan of Coach's Corner and my pal suggested that hearing from Cherry would brighten his day. I phoned Don with the request and he told me to leave it with him. A few days later, I found out that not only did Cherry phone the man, but he arranged for a limo to pick him up and drive him to his Mississauga, Ont. restaurant. There, Don took the time to have lunch with the stricken man.

Cherry will probably curse me for telling this story, because he prefers to do his good deeds anonymously. But, I feel it's important for TV viewers to realize that the moments he spends commemorating Canadian soldiers that are lost in Afghanistan are the most genuine moments of his weekly program. No person in this country has done more for the morale of our servicemen, or has better represented the memory of those we have lost.

The Oprah Club

2008-02-15T15:22:00.001-05:00

From S.M. Hutchens, writing at Touchstone - Mere Comments:

Whenever Oprah Winfrey comes out with a new book club selection, we at the public library know it within twenty seconds. This is no exaggeration. The Oprah books are, of course, favored almost exclusively by women. Middle-aged white women comprise the largest group of fiction readers. I expect them to be reading the kind of stuff she recommends, even without her recommendation. What happens when Oprah selects is that the huge number of them who are currently reading Danielle Steel or Sue Grafton or Nora Roberts are alerted to another woman-type fiction book and all crowd over to the lee rail of that particular literary ship to get sight of something they might otherwise have passed over, since the Oprah books are typically not mere entertainment, but entertainment salted with cracker-barrel philosophy that helps them feel, well, whatever it is that Oprahites need to feel.

Her audience (as I can see it from where I sit) is interesting in that she seems to range considerably outside this group of typical fiction readers to younger women, non-whites, and the less-educated. If mere literacy is a societal value, then Oprah certainly encourages it, and deserves every bit of lionessization that American Library Association types can lavish on her.

Mere literacy has no value in itself. It is worthy only as the servant of virtue. The virtues of Oprahism, however, appear to be subordinate to, and ordered by, the prime virtue of self-realization and self-actualization rather than that of finding the self by losing it in sacrificial service to others, subject to the will of God. Its heroes tend to be Prometheans injured by, and in defiance of, the Traditional Moral Order (let us all weep for them a bit), lap-christs for the entertainment of silly women. Oprahism, to be sure, is chock-full of "virtues," but the order in which they are placed relative to one another in the scheme of the whole makes the phenomenon a veil of evil.

LifeSiteNews - Ominous Connections

2008-02-14T08:55:00.003-05:00

From LifeSiteNews:

LifeSiteNews Message for February 13

Dear LifeSiteNews readers,

Many new readers of LifeSiteNews have difficulty making a connection between abortion, euthanasia, contraception, feminism, explicit sex education, promotion of homosexuality, de-population programs, eugenics, environmental extremism, suppression of religious freedom and globalism. We always hope that after a few months of reading LifeSiteNews they begin to see the connection. Many, including most of the world's religious leaders, haven't been exposed to this information, or if they have, still don't get it or, in very many cases, don't have the courage or trust in God to face the disturbing truth.

The development in Brazil, reported in today's top story by our Latin American correspondent Matthew Hoffman, is exciting news. The Brazilian [Roman Catholic] bishops appear to have suddenly come much farther than all others in realizing and accepting the reality of the "big picture", the above mentioned, "connection", that we at LifeSiteNews have been aware of for years. Even more exciting is that they are taking bold actions to hold accountable those responsible for this massive manipulation and abuse of power - even at the highest international levels.

We hope the Brazilian Bishops' example will be emulated by many more leaders throughout the world. The world is in great danger from the de-population totalitarians who have already caused great harm. Theirs is indeed a very dangerous movement of people and organizations who have very little, if any regard for the inherent dignity of every human life and for freedom. What they wish to achieve far exceeds anything accomplished by Nazism or Communism - and so far they have made huge advances. The producers of the film "Demographic Winter" attest to that.

Bravo for the Brazilian bishops who are responding as bishops should, with great courage and boldness for the benefit of those who are being exploited and oppressed.

We suggest that you continue to read LifeSiteNews reports in the context of the above paragraphs. To further your understanding, if you have not already done so, we strongly suggest you take the time to read the most popular document on LifeSiteNews, The Inherent Racism of Population Control, by Paul Jalsevac.

More than any other report on LifeSiteNews, that document reveals the enormous, deadly influence of International Planned Parenthood and other elements of the depopulation/eugenics movement. It explains the connection between all those items in the first paragraph of this message. Please read the document and tell others about it.
Steve Jalsevac LifeSiteNews.com

Niebuhr on Liberal Protestantism

2008-02-13T17:46:00.001-05:00

This brought a [knowing] smile to my face. From orrologion:

...In the 1930's, Reinhold Niebuhr famously observed that liberal Protestantism preached "a God without wrath who brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross."

Snow in Toronto

2008-02-13T13:22:00.002-05:00

The horror ... the horror...

The Justice - and Mercy - of God

2008-02-09T09:10:00.002-05:00

Pope Benedict XVI speaking at a meeting with the Parish Priests and Clergy of Rome (February 7, 2008) - from RORATE CÆLI:

We all desire a fair world. But we cannot repair all the destructions of the past, all the people unjustly tormented and killed. Only God himself can create justice, which must be justice for all, even for the dead. And, as Adorno, a great Marxist, says, only the resurrection of the flesh, which he considers unreal, could create justice.

We believe in this resurrection of the flesh, in which not all will be equal. It is common to think today: whatever is sin, God is magnificent, he knows us, therefore sin does not matter, in the end God will be nice with everyone. It is a beautiful hope. Yet, there is justice, and there is true guilt. Those who have destroyed man and earth cannot suddenly sit beside their victims at the table of God. God creates justice. We must have this present.

It seemed thus important for me to write also this text [Spe Salvi] on purgatory, which for me is such an obvious truth, so clear and also so necessary and consoling that is cannot be forgotten. I tried to say: perhaps there are not so many who have destroyed themselves thus, who are forever incurable, who do not have any element left upon which the love of God may rest, who do not have in themselves a minimum capacity for loving. This would be hell.

On the other hand, they are certainly few - or at least not many - those who are so pure as to be able to immediately enter in the communion with God. Very many of us hope that there be something curable in us, that there be a final desire to serve God and to serve men, of living according to God. But there are so many wounds, so much filth. We have the need of being ready, of being purified. This is our hope: even with so much filth in our souls, in the end the Lord gives us the possibility, cleanses us finally with his goodness which comes from his cross. He thus renders us capable of being forever with him. And therefore heaven is hope, it is justice finally realized. And he gives us also the criteria for living so that this [present] time may also be, in a certain way, heaven, a first light of heaven.

Wherever men live according to these criteria, a speck of heaven appears in the world, and this is visible. It seems to me also an evidence of the truth of faith, of the need to follow the way of the commandments, of which we should speak more often. They are truly road signs and show us how to live well, how to choose life. Therefore, we must also speak of sin and of the sacrament of forgiveness and reconciliation. A sincere man knows that he is guilty, that he should start anew, that he should be purified. And this is the wonderful reality which the Lord offers us: there is a possibility for renewal, of being new. The Lord starts anew with us and we can thus start anew also with the others in our life.

What means this word Catholic?

2008-02-08T14:25:00.001-05:00

An interesting perspective - and one with which [I think] I largely agree - from Father Robert Hart (a "traditional" Anglican priest in Australia) at The Anglican Continuum:

"Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is is necessary that he hold the Catholic Faith. Which Faith except everyone do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. And the Catholic Faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance." - Opening of the Athanasian Creed

"I believe in the Holy Ghost: The holy Catholic Church; The Communion of Saints: The Forgiveness of sins: The Resurrection of the body: And the Life everlasting. Amen." - From the Apostle's Creed "And I believe one Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church." - From the Creed called Nicene (i.e. Nicene-Constantinopolitan). From the usage of the word "Catholic" in ancient times we see that it speaks, above all, of the Church and of the Faith of that Church (namely, its doctrine). This word is used by everybody in Christianity, and is the property of no one denomination. The churches under the Pope, the Roman Catholic and the Byzantine (Eastern Rite) Catholic Churches, have been associated with this word in a denominational sense, which causes some confusion. It leads to the bad argument of Cardinal Newman, that if, in any town you asked to be taken to the Catholic Church, you would be taken to the Roman Catholic Church, which makes it, alone, the real thing. Actually, it means the cab driver reads the signs on the front of church buildings, and it proves only that he is literate, at least to that degree. Beyond that, it proves nothing. It offends some Roman Catholics that others, Anglicans, the Orthodox, the Polish National Catholic Church, sometimes even the Byzantine Catholic Churches, openly use the word "Catholic" as their own property. But, the use of this word by others is not intended as a gesture of disrespect for Roman Catholics, and neither is it used to seduce the naive of their flock into a wolf's lair- the old "bait and switch." It is, rather, respect for what we know ourselves to be, and for what we believe and teach (and the capital "C" is used in the Book of Common Prayer because, by usage, "Catholic" is a name of the Church. We need not use the lower case). We believe in the Catholic Church, and furthermore, we believe the One, Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church (i.e. we believe what it teaches and the Truth to which it testifies). Each of us says these words in the first person: "I believe." This is not a denominational word, but a credal word. It is a word that exists in the persuasion of the mind, the depth of the heart and the power of conscience. It is theological, not cultural. And, as each person says it liturgically, by the rule of Lex Orandi Lex Credendi, each one rightly takes it as his own. We do not say we believe it as someone else's property, removed from us. We do not claim to believe a church that we do not belong to. We do not confess a Faith that we cannot own. We intend no offense or disrespect, and certainly no deception; but, we will not give up this word or what it means, for it belongs to us just as surely as Christ himself is our Lord. When we speak of branches of the Church, we do not intend even so much as to imply, let alone assert, that outward and apparent division among God's people is the plan and purpose of God. It is not of the nature of the Church that it exists in divided branches, rather it is symptomatic of the current state of all mankind this side of our promised immortality. Partly, divisions are due to the sin and foolishness of fallen man, and the problem of division was addressed long ago by St. Paul, writing to the Church in Corinth.
"For it hath been declared unto me of you, my brethren, by them which are of the house of Chloe, that there are contentions among you. Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ" (I Corinthians 1:11, 12). He did not say, "the true Church among you are those who say 'I am of Cephas.' " Neither did he say, "the true Church among you are both those who say 'I am of Cephas' and 'I am of Paul'- the double foundation o' foolish Corinthians." Even those who saw themselves as separate because they were better than the others, those who said "I am of Christ," were rebuked by the Apostle for their divisiveness. Paul attributed all of this to childishness and carnality (I Corinthians 3:3, 4). The idea that these divisions were God's plan, or that one party should be favored as right, and the others condemned as wrong, was not considered by the Apostle. Nor would he consider it today.
But, current divisions into which the Church has been driven are historical, not the fault of anyone living, and they are beyond the power of anyone simply to remedy (therefore I said "partly" above). The Anglican view is that both Rome and Orthodoxy are the One True Church, and so are we. In fact, we agree with The Catechism of the Catholic Church where it says that everyone who is baptized belongs to the Church (I Corinthians 12:13). Division is not the plan of God, but he has provided what is needed for the salvation of each soul through the Church, nonetheless. Furthermore, the divisions exist even among members of the same Communions. In the United States each major city has Orthodox Churches of various jurisdictions, answering to different bishops under different Patriarchates. And, before anyone begins to crow triumphantly, let it be remembered that in addition to the Roman (as in Latin Rite) Catholic bishop, in any given city we find any number of Byzantine Catholic bishops (and often feelings of strife exist between the Byzantine Catholics and the Latin Rite, or Roman, Catholics). Nonetheless, people in these outwardly divided bodies, none of whom created this work of history, are part of the Body of Christ and belong to one Church. The Church Militant is visible, and, for the present, visibly divided.
Common Property

It was never possible, really, for the Gospel to be preached in all nations without the Church having within it differences of culture and language. Therefore, unity has had obstacles, some of them very sad. The division of the Coptic Christians from the rest of the Church as early as the Council of Chalcedon was not about real heresy, but about perceived heresy due to a simple, or rather complicated, misunderstanding of the Greek word, ὑπόστᾰσις (hypostasis). Differences of culture have also caused problems of misunderstanding. But, for the most part, the Church was unified for a thousand years, and only in recent decades (beginning in the 1960s) have the ancient Patriarchates of Rome and Constantinople approached each other in charity with a view to reconciliation. But, they remain divided.
Our common property, nonetheless, is the Apostolic Succession, both as an unbroken line of orthodox teaching, and as a sacramental link through our bishops to the Apostles and the Incarnate Christ, the Risen Christ Who breathed on them the Holy Spirit. This is the Tradition that includes all of our Scriptures with the key that unlocks their true meaning, the gift of the Holy Spirit. Our fathers died and were imprisoned during the persecution by the Empire, and they fought for the Faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 3) by defending and clarifying that Faith, seen most obviously in the Ecumenical Councils. They preached in times and places of peril to pagans of many tongues and strange customs, overcame opposition, and established the Church of Christ in many lands where demonic spirits demanded sacrifice to false gods, tearing down those shrines to build new holy places for the preaching of the Gospel and the administration of the sacraments.
The mark of the Holy Spirit is the revelation of Jesus Christ that we find as their collective teaching, and the Gospel that was the testimony of the Apostles and other martyred eyewitnesses. The teaching has its universal and complete uniformity of meaning because of the Holy Spirit, who creates unity of mind that cuts through all the chaos of human fallenness, across times and across continents. This is "what has been believed always, everywhere and by all" clearly and obviously in a way that defies the apparent disunity of temporary polities.
This is what we mean by "the Catholic Church" and "the Catholic Faith." It is our common possession.

Book Meme

2008-02-01T09:11:00.001-05:00

Here are the rules:

Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. (No cheating!)
Find Page 123.
Find the first 5 sentences.
Post the next 3 sentences.

Uh-oh. The nearest book just happened to be something called The Holy Bible (Douay-Rheims Version)...

He that entereth into the house when it is shut, shall be unclean till evening.

And he that sleepeth in it, and eateth anything, shall wash his clothes.

But if the priest going in perceive that the leprosy is not spread in the house, after it was plastered again, he shall purify it, it being cured.

(From Leviticus XIV)

Life unworthy of life?

2008-02-01T08:51:00.001-05:00

From The hermeneutic of continuity - speaking here of the UK specifically ... but coming soon (?) to a theatre near you & me, too:

John Smeaton has an shocking example of the depths to which debate is sinking on pro-life matters in the UK. (See Do we live in a civilised country? Draw your own conclusions) Baroness Meacher spoke in Parliament the other day to suggest that for two children she knew with cerebral palsy "It would be in their best interests to have been aborted." Baroness Tonge, clearly aware that it is not politically acceptable to call for the killing of disabled people, attempted to redefine the terms in a way that is eerily familiar:
"... we were not talking here about disabled human beings, but about some grossly abnormal human beings; many of those whom I have seen bear little resemblance to human beings."
I think it is apposite to quote in this context a sermon of Cardinal Clemens von Galen given in August 1941. The Cardinal speaks of the mentally ill but we know that those with cerebral palsy were also included in the programme which he condemned:
If it is once accepted that people have the right to kill 'unproductive' fellow humans--and even if initially it only affects the poor defenseless mentally ill - then as a matter of principle murder is permitted for all unproductive people, in other words for the incurably sick, the people who have become invalids through labor and war, for us all when we become old, frail and therefore unproductive.

Then, it is only necessary for some secret edict to order that the method developed for the mentally ill should be extended to other 'unproductive' people, that it should be applied to those suffering from incurable lung disease, to the elderly who are frail or invalids, to the severely disabled soldiers. Then none of our lives will be safe any more. Some commission can put us on the list of the 'unproductive,' who in their opinion have become worthless life. And no police force will protect us and no court will investigate our murder and give the murderer the punishment he deserves.

Who will be able to trust his doctor any more?
In those days, the RAF dropped copies of Von Galen's sermon among German troops. Perhaps they might drop some over the Palace of Westminster now?

1984 Attracts

2008-01-28T09:27:00.001-05:00

Interesting - and, as per usual, thought-provoking if not outright inflammatory (esp. re: 9/11!?!) - commentary today from Dinoscopus:

Eleison Comments XXIX
When in a small publication of the Society of St. Pius X in England -- circulation about 500 -- an article recently appeared describing the police-state fast closing in on Great Britain, the British authorities complained to SSPX headquarters in Switzerland! It gives one to reflect....

As people have today less and less religion, so they have less and less reason to control themselves. If I believe neither in God nor in any moral law, nor in any afterlife eternally rewarding or punishing my observance or non-observance of that law, why should I put any brake upon satisfying my selfish desires in this life? But a society of such egoists must turn into a jungle of human beasts devouring one another.

Therefore where the people have neither faith nor internal self-discipline, they must welcome any external discipline enabling their society to survive, e.g. (or i.e.) a police-state. As seminaries close, so prisons must open. Today, prisons can hardly be built fast enough.

Now in any such dissociety of course there will be villains fabricating reasons to impose and extend the police-state for their own nefarious purposes. 9/11 is a classic example. However, even in the case of 9/11 there might have been amongst the authorities some honest men who said, "Lies and fabrications are nasty, but how else can one govern a modern population ?" Alas, they would have had a point!

So the police-state may be a bad substitute for godliness, but where the people are godless, such a State may appear to be the only way to hold a society together, and whoever opposes it will then appear to be anti-social. In this respect the defenders of modern police-states may mean well, and not deserve blame. However, let them have no part in tomorrow's persecution of Christians towards which today's police-states are being steered! The Catholic Faith upheld by the SSPX is not in fact their problem, but it is of their real problem the true solution.
Bishop Richard Williamson Paris, France

Ave verum corpus

2008-01-27T08:32:00.001-05:00

Ave verum corpus natum de Maria Virgine Vere passum, immolatum in cruce pro homine Cuius latus perforatum unda fluxit sanguine Esto nobis praegustatum mortis in examine O Jesu dulcis, o Jesu pie, o Jesu fili Mariae

(Thanks to The Anchoress.)

The End of the Music Industry?

2008-01-23T09:53:00.001-05:00

From Robert Thompson's Daynotes Journal:

It seems that others, including the music industry itself, are finally catching on to what I've been saying for at least ten years. The music industry is dead, gone beyond any hope of salvage. The glory days are gone for good, killed by the Internet eliminating the artificial scarcity upon which the industry depended. The era of "superstar" musicians and groups is giving way to a new era in which many more musicians and groups will find a wider audience, while the platinum-plated superstars of the past find themselves earning middle-class incomes. Even The Economist is now sounding the death knell of the music companies: "IN 2006 EMI, the world's fourth-biggest recorded-music company, invited some teenagers into its headquarters in London to talk to its top managers about their listening habits. At the end of the session the EMI bosses thanked them for their comments and told them to help themselves to a big pile of CDs sitting on a table. But none of the teens took any of the CDs, even though they were free. “That was the moment we realised the game was completely up,” says a person who was there." The music industry is now well into its death spiral. CD sales have been declining year-on-year for years, and are now falling month-on-month. Fewer CDs being sold means retailers allocate less shelf space to CDs, which in turn means still fewer CDs will be sold, and the shelf space will be further reduced in a spiral that ends only when CDs are allocated no shelf space at all. Electronic sales of single tracks can't make up for lost revenues from declining CD sales, and anyway electronic sales appear to have peaked and begun to decline in real terms. Most people simply aren't willing to pay much if anything for music any more, and that's never going to change. Musicians will still make a living, of course, just as they did before the music industry was born. They'll make their livings by touring, by selling branded gear, and by selling CDs and electronic tracks directly to the fans who want to support them financially. Good musicians will probably make no more than middle-class incomes, and in fact Internet distribution means that it's likely that more musicians will be able to make at least a modest living than have ever been able to do so in the past. But the days of the top 0.01% of musicians earning millions are rapidly drawing to a close, as are the days when the music "industry" was able to insinuate itself between the musicians and their fans, taking the lion's share of the income.

A Brave New World

2008-01-19T14:24:00.000-05:00

The media is telling us now that the economy is bad and going to get worse. Who knows? Confidence or lack of confidence itself can effect the overall economy, and these factors can be effect by media hype. I am not claiming media hype at the moment, but I do not generally trust the media (surprise) and for all the objectivity and independence of the media, it's amazing how often the same stories with the same spins appear. As important as the economy is, I think it pales in importance to the life issues facing our civilization, and I don't mean "just" abortion. I mean human cloning, chimeras, human-animal hybrids, fetal and embryo experimentation, euthanasia, genetic engineering, cyborgs, bio-medical science doing whatever can be done because it can be done. "Let's see what happens when we cross a human with a snake." We know we are in an ethical free-fall generally, (just look at our politicians and businessmen, in general, not all, of course); why should I trust "science" backed by billions of dollars to respect human dignity and the sanctity of life? I would favor a tough ban on a host of items--I don't know enough to list every one in detail, but I believe most of us think that the "frankenstein" factor is not well regulated. The 35th anniversary of Roe v Wade is upon us. Not long after that immoral ruling by our highest court, it became routine for many "doctors" to ask expecting mothers "do you want to keep 'it'?" We were assured that man's search-and-destroy mission in the womb would lead to a society in which children would be better off, always wanted, and women would be happier and healthier. The media loved it, promoted it. They lied, children died. James M. Kushiner - Touchstone

Off the Rails?

2008-01-01T15:19:00.000-05:00

And here I thought some of the tech companies I've worked for had, ahem, issues ... but wow! ... if this on-going rant by Zed Shaw is any indication, I'm really, really glad I didn't pursue my interest in Ruby on Rails a couple of years ago.

The Holiness of the Church

2007-12-28T09:09:00.000-05:00

Can inadequacies of individual people sully the holiness of the Church? A partial answer to that question was given by Archpriest Valentin Sventsitsky (1882-1931), a remarkable pastor and confessor, who suffered a great deal at the hands of the atheist regime. The following is an excerpt from a homily given by Fr. Valentin in the 1920s, during an awful time of persecution against the Russian Church: Inadequacies in the Church are not just a contemporary manifestation; they have always existed. It is enough but to recall the words of St. Gregory the Theologian, ‘Faith in God has perished.' It is enough but to recall the words of St. John Chrysostom, who in a talk on the Epistle to the Corinthians said, ‘In the Church, we only have a plethora of fond memories that both in times past and now people would gather together to chant. However, before, when people gathered together to chant, there was oneness of mind, while now you would be hard put to find even one person who would be of one mind with you.' And this used to be said then, at a time when some of the Nicene Fathers were still alive, when Athanasios the Great had just reposed, when Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, and John Chrysostom were alive. But what does this mean? It means only that as the result of human weaknesses and illnesses, the Church on earth has many inadequacies. Can transgressions of individual people shake the holiness of the Church? What a temptation, what a great misunderstanding is expressed if I should leave the Church because I have encountered an unworthy pastor, if I should no longer believe in the Church because one or another bearer of grace has made a bad personal impression on me. The holiness of the Church does not rest in that. It rests in the Mysteries, in the holiness of God's Grace, in all of the good which that Grace has done for men's souls; it rests in that assembly of saints who were saved by that grace, it rests in every truly kind impulse of our souls. These glorious and holy [things] are what comprise the holiness of the Church. Our sins – our illnesses – are sinful weaknesses that we wash and cleanse in that Holy Church of Christ. For that reason, let us not be troubled in our personal life by the evil idea that we need not labour when we are weakened by our sins, and likewise let us not, let our faith not, be troubled by doubts in the holiness of the Church whenever we see some inadequacy or other in the earthly Church. Our recognition of our sins should evoke in us not despondency, but only ever greater effort to do the Lord's work. Recognition of inadequacies in church life should bring about not estrangement from the Holy Church, but even greater love for it, and a desire to serve for the good of the Church. Archpriest Valentin Sventsitsky Link to original

Images from Antioch

2007-12-24T14:52:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Father John Fenton for highlighting this beautiful video of images from the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch. (Antioch, the city where "the disciples were first named Christians" - Acts 11:26)

Technology Quotes

2007-12-23T16:05:00.000-05:00

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977.
"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." Rich Cook, author, best known for his Wizardry series of books.
"UNIX is basically a simple operating system, but you have to be a genius to understand the simplicity." Dennis Ritchie, Bell Labs, creator of the C programming language and key developer of UNIX.
"The number one benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to do. It lets people be creative. It lets people be productive. It lets people learn things they didn't think they could learn before, and so in a sense it is all about potential." Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft.

Source and commentary.

Sense Appeal - Samuel Hoppe

2007-12-10T15:07:00.000-05:00

Life is good - Samuel Hoppe

2007-12-10T15:05:00.000-05:00

Samuel Hoppe R.I.P.

2007-12-10T14:56:00.000-05:00

HOPPE, Samuel : January 9, 1958 - December 3, 2007 Samuel Hoppe passed away peacefully, but all too soon on December 3, 2007 after battling complications due to Multiple Sclerosis. He will be deeply missed by his mother Ellen, his brothers Toomas and Eliot, his daughters Michelle, Melanie (spouse Phil) and Sara, his wife Diane and of course all his nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends. Sam spent the last few years of his life living at Bendale Acres Home for the Aged and will also be deeply missed by the residents, staff and visitors. His life may have been short, compared to most, but he never looked back on what might have been, he only moved forward in faith and trust.

Clear Creek Monastery

2007-12-06T11:15:00.001-05:00

A lovely & inspiring documentary video on a (Roman Catholic) Benedictine monastery in Clear Creek Oklahoma:

A smaller world

2007-12-04T15:30:00.000-05:00

I seek a shore where I can fence in a patch of the horizon with trees or reeds. Where, gathering infinity, I can have the sense that: there are no machines or very few; there are no soldiers or very few; there are no weapons or very few, and those few aimed at the exit of the forests with wolves; or that there are no merchants or very few at remote points on the earth where paved roads have not yet been laid. God hopes that at least in the poets' sobs paradise will never cease to exist. By Nikiforos Vrettakos (From Turtle Rock)

Happy Name Day to me!

2007-11-24T19:14:00.000-05:00

See last year's post celebrating St Victor of Damascus...here

A Prayer of St Philaret of Moscow

2007-11-24T18:13:00.000-05:00

Lord, I do not know what to beg of Thee; Thou alone knowest what is needful for me. Thou lovest me more than I know how to love Thee. O Father, give to Thy slave that for which I do not know how to beg. I do not dare to ask for either a cross or a consolation; I am only standing before Thee with my heart open to Thee. Thou seest my needs which I do not even know; see and deal with me according to Thy mercy. Purge and heal me, humble and raise me; I am in awe before Thee and I am silent before Thy will and Thine unfathomable ways for me. I bring myself as a sacrifice to Thee. Teach me to pray. Pray Thyself within me. Amen. (In giving spiritual instruction, Elder Michael of Valaam used to order that this prayer of St Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow, be prayed every day.)

Which Church Father Are You?

2007-11-22T15:53:00.000-05:00

You’re St. Melito of Sardis! You have a great love of history and liturgy. You’re attached to the traditions of the ancients, yet you recognize that the old world — great as it was — is passing away. You are loyal to the customs of your family, though you do not hesitate to call family members to account for their sins. Find out which Church Father you are at The Way of the Fathers!

The Vatican Dogma - Bulgakov

2007-11-08T11:55:00.001-05:00

"At present the Vatican dogma is the central problem for the reunion of the church—if the Lord ever reveals to the world this miracle of His mercy. Earlier, at the epoch of the councils of Lyons and of Florence the chief subject of dogmatic disagreement was the dogma about the Holy Spirit, the filioque clause; questions of papal primacy, of using leavened or unleavened bread for the Eucharist, of purgatory and a few others were of secondary importance. In our time, the question about the Holy Spirit has not of course lost either its importance or its difficulty, but in fact, in the believers’ minds, it has ceased to be an impedimentum dirimens (to use V. V. Bolotov’s term) and admits of calm theological discussion, such e.g. as took place in conferring with the Old Catholics. The question about the unleavened bread and the differences between the Eastern and Western liturgies, the significance of which was at one time exaggerated out of all proportion, has also almost lost its importance. Even the question of purgatory and of the new dogma of the Immaculate Conception (in so far as it is dissociated from that of papal infallibility) is comparatively of secondary importance. "But all these particular disagreements are blotted out by one that is fundamental: by papacy grown strong during the centuries of schism and established as a dogma at the Vatican. This is the basic and decisive divergence between East and West. Catholicism identified itself with papacy and takes its stand upon it; Orthodoxy cannot under any circumstances accept papacy which it regards as a heresy in the doctrine about the church, although it can and should recognize the primacy of the Roman See and honour it as of old. We are thus brought to a deadlock: until Catholicism ceases to be papistry and renounces the Vatican dogma (if only through a new and more exact definition of it)—and this requires a kind of geological cataclysm—there is no way to union with it. But what is impossible to man is possible to God, and all we can do is to trust to Providence which leads us, rules the destinies of the Church, and does that which with men is impossible." Father Sergei Bulgakov (1929) - Link to entire article