William Grosso @ October 5, 2008
Note: I posted this in a comment on scripting news this morning. And then thought– it’s a nice summary of how I’m thinking this election season. Why not put it on my own blog?
As part of that, I also corrected capitalization and spellings.
So, I’m neither a Republican nor a Democrat. I’m kind of a ‘tweener in that I’m “liberal” on most social issues, a a classic free-market capitalist on most economic issues, and as close to being an isolationist in foreign policy as you can be in a flat world.
I’m also torn this election because I think McCain is more likely to lead the Iraq effort to a successful end. And I’m a little scared by the tax implications of Obama’s policies (I already pay enough, and government is already big enough). On the other hand, Palin. Well, she ain’t me and she ain’t even close. And that tips me into Obama supporter land.
But I have to say, speaking as an outsider, that the distortions, lies, nastiness, and outright deceptions are pretty much ubiquitous across the political landscape. From my perspective, both sides do a lot of less-than-honorable things, and fling a lot known-to-be-false accusations. And both sides also frequently rear up in righteous indignation.
Even worse, though, is the way their legions of fans do it. In a facebook comment, someone stated that “Palin is a robot programmed to say the same thing over and over” and didn’t get it when I said that seemed dehumanizing.
This morning, a friend’s blog linked to another blog article that led with “Sarah Palin is a stupid, self important, ignorant bitch who I wouldn’t put in charge of wiping her own ass.”
Removing the false (”stupid”, “ignorant” — she’s the governor of a state, even if it’s a relatively unimportant one, and has done a credible job there. That pretty much rules out “stupid” and “ignorant”) and the redundant (”self important”– all politicians are) and the personal judgements that the author is unqualified to make (”bitch”), we get “I don’t want to vote for her.”
Which I agree with.
Rather than blogs helping us recapture the conversation, and bring it back to things that matter, all too often the great majority of posts and utterances are sheer partisan hackery. And that makes me think that we, the great masses, are a significant part of the problem.
If’ we’re willing to sling all this shit around, then how can we begin to correct our leaders?
Anyway, that’s my sundaymorningrant
Filed under: Dyspeptic, Politics, Society |
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William Grosso @ October 2, 2008
Update: by far the best commentary on the bailout has been over in the Becker-Posner blog,
So, for the past week. aside from a few moments pondering tonight’s “debate”1, I’ve been pondering the bailout plan.
Followers of my facebook feed know, of course, that I think the bailout is a bad idea. Even after my lunch [...]
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William Grosso @ September 27, 2008
Another week, another great SDForum Event.
I’ve been a volunteer at SDForum for a while, helping it educate the valley about the almost-bleeding edge in software. And, I’m proud to say: the organization is continuing to do amazing things.
Witness: the cloud computing event.
With our typical quasi-engineering skill at marketing, the first thing you see is the [...]
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William Grosso @ July 20, 2008
I got an email today from a consulting service looking to outsource some Lucene contracting. Somehow, someway, they got my name and thought “Hmmm. We could send some Lucene consulting his way.”
That reminded me of the startup I founded in 2003. I was relatively new to the idea of founding my own company and, for [...]
Filed under: Business of Software, Career |
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William Grosso @ July 18, 2008
From craigslist today. Since that ad will expire, here’s the entirety
Exciting startup in downtown Palo Alto is seeking a motivated, smart computer science graduate or student who has a passion for Ruby on Rails. We are looking for the following skills:
• Expert in Ruby language
• Expert in Rails 2+ framework
• Good knowledge of in [...]
Filed under: Dyspeptic, Society |
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William Grosso @ July 16, 2008
SDForum’s community suffered a great loss when Barbara Cass retired.
The loss is even greater now.
Filed under: SDForum, Society |
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William Grosso @ July 12, 2008
THE BACKGROUND:
In the bad old days, before everything was on-line and available in structured ways, people used postal mail to send paper copies of their resumes to potential employers.
And, a surprisingly large percentage of the time, their resumes were inaccurate. A somewhat smaller percentage of the time, the resumes were deliberately inaccurate1. Depending on the [...]
Filed under: Business of Software, Dyspeptic, Society |
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William Grosso @ July 5, 2008
Recently, I ran across Richard Monson-Haefel’s statement that he admires James Gosling.
RMH wrote:
My admiration for him is based on that fact that he invented a platform that was not only interesting and exciting but a platform that is perhaps the most successful programming platform in history. There are more Java software developers and more Java [...]
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William Grosso @ July 1, 2008
Recently, while reading the 37 Signals blog, I ran across a brief description of the Word of Mouth Manual, Volume II1.
The 37 signals description is admirably concise:
Dave Balter, from the clever word of mouth marketing agency BzzAgent, has a special treat for our Signal vs. Noise readers. His new book, The Word Of Mouth Manual, [...]
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William Grosso @ June 7, 2008
I just discovered this morning that Peter Seibel, whom I deeply respect and have lunch with every other year, has been successfully manipulating the very fabric of the web.
A bit of explanation: “Link text” is the label that is displayed with a hyperlink. So, in the paragraph above, “successfully manipulating the very fabric of the [...]
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