makeshiftmind

Here are some films that I definitely plan to see this year!

Renaissance
The Illusionist
The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford
The Night Listener
Children of Men
The Prestige
Flyboys
Crank

and last but not least…

Transformers

My company, RCIG, is currently looking for full time PHP and Java developers, as well as Project Managers and Dev Leads. If you’re interested in any positions, please send me your contact info and resume and I’ll make sure it gets into the right hands (email on the left).

The UK is preparing a large database tracking program to monitor all the children in the country. According to this article:

Computer records holding details of school performance, diet and even whether their parents provide a ‘positive role model’ for 12 million children will be held by the Government.

Police, social workers, teachers and doctors will have access to the database and have powers to flag up ‘concerns’ where children are not meeting criteria laid down by the state.

Is this the best Europe has to offer the world? A “soft” dictatorship in which the homes of all private citizens are continually monitored according to the “criteria laid down by the state”?

Don’t kid yourself — this is a gross encroachment on freedom and individual rights, regardless of what the purported purpose of the law might be.

When will people realize that tyranny can be masked in good intentions? There is a reason that the United States Constitution bars the government from assuming unto itself powers that are not explicitly enumerated, regardless of the “intentions” of politicians, however “benevolent” they may sound.

If the citizens of the UK don’t immediately react to this program and remove their politicians from office, they are only getting what they deserve. Perhaps that is what they want — they are not willing to take responsibility for their own children, so they want the state to raise them. The forfeiture of responsibility is the forfeiture of rights, pure and simple.

Here is a priceless article dispelling the common myth that, in order for business to succeed, you must become a door mat for customers.

Wal-Mart, eat your heart out.

I just want to say how proud I am of my wife for the hard work she is putting into a new paper on FAS 123(R) (expensing stock options). She has spent the last two days pouring through articles and books that, frankly, would bore me to tears (and I read computer manuals for fun!) to give her a thorough, working understanding of the issue’s implications for her profession. Despite jeers from her “co-interns”, who believe that papers should be written no sooner than two days prior to their due date, and who prefer to spend their time drinking and getting laid than studying, Brittany has set a much higher standard for herself and I have no doubt that her diligence will be rewarded both academically and occupationally.

Props to the wife, yo.

Progress cannot be achieved by forced privations, by squeezing a “social surplus” out of starving victims. Progress can come only out of individual surplus, i.e., from the work, the energy, the creative over-abundance of those men whose ability produces more than their personal consumption requires, those who are intellectually and financially able to seek the new, to improve on the known, to move forward. In a capitalist society, where such men are free to function and to take their own risks, progress is not a matter of sacrificing to some distant future, it is part of the living present, it is the normal and natural, it is achieved as and while men live–and enjoy–their lives.
–Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

Failure is a means of reducing the number of perceived possible paths to success.