An interesting thought occurred to me this morning: What if all the descriptions of time that scientists have come up with, are in fact descriptions of the supernatural?
 
From theistic Newton's absolute time ticking away whether anybody notices it or not, to relativity, to personal biological time, what if miracles are just the slight differences between absolute time, relative time, and personal time?
 
My own mental defect, Asperger's Syndrome, certainly has a role in this. I can shift into panic mode really easily, making time slow down for me. I can also shift into a state where I slow down and time speeds up. It costs me- both states can cause migraines, and my muscles and sensory input don't always keep up with my brain- but I can do it. Time is not linear for me, it's more like the multidimensional time of string theory. But it occurs to me that being "personally unstuck in time" could explain a large number of miraculous events that I've heard about.
 
This would make "God", the God of Absolute Time- the cause of all those events that doesn't have any other cause. The original Time Lord. God is from Gallifrey?

Is that they might use it without thinking first.

An admittedly Catholic blogger asks a very interesting question about modern sex education. Why don't modern sex education classes teach anything about what science knows about human fertility?

Can a contract signed in an ambulance or an emergency room authorizing treatment be considered free consent?

This question comes from the recent decision in Belgium to extend the right of euthanasia to children. I of course am arguing that euthanasia is never done with free consent even for adults- the pain of the disease is equivalent to a contract signed under torture, and thus cannot be considered free consent.

You know... since I've written enterprise applications (singlehandedly, and no, I won't tell you which ones) that dwarf slashdot... I might be tempted to write a replacement, given how bad Beta is and how much people are complaining about it...

How would I do it? In the spirit of Open Source, I'd use PostgreSQL as a database backend, as MySQL or MariaDB is, in my humble opinion, inferior to PostgreSQL.

One reason is the syntax of PL-PGSQL vs. T-SQL. I hate T-SQL compared to PL-PGSQL (or just PL-SQL if I'm writing a Stored Proc for Oracle).

After that, I'd model the database to do what I want, and store what I want, and I'd ensure that the data was fully in 3rd Normal Form.

And if you bitch about joins, I'll hit you with a fucking sledgehammer.

After that, throwing up some PHP to format the page is an afterthought. The critical piece is getting the database right.

The database itself would need to be clustered to be able to scale with the load, and PostgreSQL does a pretty nice job of it.

Next week my wife is in Antalya for a conference. The day after she gets back I fly to Manila. I start by going backwards - which I usually try to avoid but it was impossible this time. I go to Amsterdam, then to Tapei and finally I will arrive in Manila. The upside, I guess, is that Schipol is a nice airport. Not as nice as Munich International, but nice.
 
My schedule there is 3 days of meetings, a day off and 3 more days of meetings. The day off we are touring Corregidor and I'm really looking forward to that. I've been to PI quite a few times back in the day when I was a trusty shellback and what not. I flew into Manila when I was just out of boot and on my way to my first command. Didn't really see any of the city though. We arrived late at night and they put us on a bus out to Subic. Should be nice. Nice and hot anyway. I'll be going from highs around 10 (admittedly warm for this time of year) to highs around 30. Between that and the humidity I'm gonna be looking forward to getting home as far as the weather goes. A little practice for when we are in Phoenix this summer.
 
After I get back from Manila I'm home for a few weeks and then I head back to Moscow. I come back from there to Hungary but instead of going home I'll be working at a conference in VisegrÃd. I'm giving presentations on some new mobile tools that we are rolling out this year. It's a nice place but I'll be glad when that is done and I'm back home in my own bed. My sweet, sweet American king size bed that sits up on a frame and box springs. I do love Europe so much but not the beds as often.
 
I've heard - just heard - that there is a way as an American to get a 3 year, multiple entry tourist visa for Russia. I'll be looking into that this summer. That's the only pain to going. Wizzair makes Moscow close and cheap. It's getting the visa that makes it a hassle. I get a visa like that I could just about pop over there whenever the mood hit me. When I wrap up the stuff I'm doing at the Moscow office I really want to get up to our office in St. Petersburg.
 
I finished up the Coursera Android course and I pick up my new Macbook pro when I'm in Manila. Then I'll start working on learning iOS development.
 
Oh - that brings me around to an interesting and tech related thing. I have enjoyed using Android Studio which is built on JetBrains stuff. And last year-ish (2012 maybe even?) I bought licenses for some of there stuff when they did this crazy sale. I'm looking at doing a lot more dev myself - html/js/css stuff, java, php - all kinds of junk. So I figured I'd see about just renewing the license on IntelliJ. The problem is their options just didn't work for me. $100 to renew a personal license is a little steep. I could reimburse it but then it's a commercial license and that's triple. They have a free license for FOSS projects but honestly while I slap open licenses on the stuff I do, none of it meets their criteria for community involvement. I'm not a student either. So I'll be going with other options. Maybe Eclipse

Horrid.

Think I'm done with slashdot (again) for a while (again).

5+ Years ago I warned people -- and got mocked by the assorted collection of fools we have for leftist trolls around here -- that if elected, Barack Obama was going to be an unmitigated disaster if elected President.

I WAS RIGHT.

From Fast and Furious to the sky high unemployment to the "recovery summer" that never happened to Benghazi to ObamaCare to the continual end runs around the constitution to illegally appointing people to the labor board to allowing a Nuclear Iran... and now in the SOTU he threatens to bypass Congress even more...

Like I said -- he's been a disaster.

The line for the libtrolls to kiss my ass starts to the left.

...I'd start my own news network. I yearn for there being available push-model (i.e. TV and radio) news of a drastically different what and how. So that I can stand it again.

I'll start with FNC. The one good thing about that network is that they cover the suprisingly large number of things that all the other networks will short-shrift or outright black out. Unless you like to have a tremendously skewed or giant blind spot in your perception of what's going on around you... It's sad that the acquisition of the other half of balance is single-source.

FNC's failings:

A) The hear both sides and then decide thing. It was an admirable experiment, but it's predicated on a crucial, yet only implicit assumption, and one that is its fatal flaw; that both sides will tell you the truth about their side, enabling you to make an educated choice. Leftists can and do exhibit occasional moments of candor about Leftism in private, one-on-one conversations, but as the amount of broadcast inherent in the situation goes up, the hesitancy towards doing so escalates almost instantaneously to infinity. (And this makes sense, if you understand that side.)

B) Their Left-wing bias. Not in slant within a piece, not in selection of pieces to run as news, but by voluntarily co-habitating in the box that is the boundaries the Left defines for us on how we think about things. Readily pulled examples include "income disparity" and "the Republican war on women". Both are transparently cheap wedge vehicles that are defined as not a problem or not existing by the Right and an untainted Center. Why would I want to hear more news delivered in the terms of Leftist manufactured thought fences, cornering and corralling my mind.

My news network would be characterized by the following pillars of approach:

1) No quotes. For example, a defense attorney saying "My client is innocent and we are going to defend against this scurrilous lawsuit vigorously." Of course they're going to say that. That's not news. That doesn't make me more informed. Same for Obama saying he wants to get the economy going again, or the Lindsey Graham verbal posturing Right-ward before his re-election time.

Besides, they're too often taken out of context, something the Right is also egregiously guilty of I'm sad to say. If a journalist is bent on twisting things, they can easily do it without the ellipses. I'm already at the mercy of the reporter, so I'd much rather they just tell me in their own words, distilling what happened to the key points.

2) No human interest stories/interviews with the neighbors/et al. Somewhat related to the first. I'm sorry that some kids are dying of cancer, but an expose on how one got to live their Batman dream for a day is not worthy of my time. Neither is "he was a quiet boy and seemed nice enough" about a murderer, or "she loved life and gave it her all every day" about a murderee.

3) The Left's side of the argument given only by Right-wingers. That is, damn knowledgeable, and willing to be fair in the interests of spelling out the whole issue to the listeners, kind of Right-wingers. Which might be hard to find and recruit enough of, in that proper interpretation of the Left seems only an occasional fancy of the moment to most on the Right.

Differing conclusions about the Left-wing side or sides would even be fine, and particularly welcome, but only if backed up by sound reasoning about demonstrable Left-wing traits. No hyperbole, just what can be supported. Food for thought.

A difficulty in this would be in how to deal with newer viewers. Those already much further along in their understanding and seeing would find a lot of boring redundancy in things taken as givens, but that are foundational and new and necessary for any kind of comprehension of the rest of the material, for such as those who inadvertently hit the wrong channel on a Daily Show ad break.

I.e. my fledgling network would face several formidable, known challenges. Summarized as not looking like any other news network that presumably anyone had even known before.

4) A late-breaking one: No sports. What can match it in the ratio of the time spent reporting on it over its immaterialness. Many daily newsish type things, like horoscopes for example, are just as inconsequential, but get nowhere near the coverage. Similarly for entertainment news.

Strictly only things of edifying qualities. I think my network tagline would be "News That Improves". Come ready to parse and analyze, or go somewhere else to any number of sources to pass idle time vegetating.

p.s. I now read at the threshold of 1. Any would-be AC's and trolls: do the math. I think I'll be much happier this way, knowing that I've eliminated at least some of the wasting of my time.

p.p.s. I've been away from this place for about nine months.

All hail the mighty pen of the executive, able to correct immigration abuse, low wages for federal contractors, retroactively change the course of technology in the oil industry (did Dr. Who imbibe the pen with the powers of the Tardis?) and even able to declare global warming a fact by fiat.

The executive order has become the law of the land. I guess THIS is how democracy dies.
----
Go here for more laughs from the State of the Onion

Abortion in America leaves the United States with a body count comparable to the most bloodthirsty regimes in history. Hitler was a piker compared to the acolytes of Margaret Sanger.

The Prophetic Sanger

The REAL Margaret Sanger

Margaret Sanger and the KKK

In a previous journal entry, I used the term "in-vitro" where I meant "in utero". I went back and fixed it.

Apparently, the bus ride to Austin and subsequent March For Life made me more tired then I realized. Still -- if it changes just one mind and saves just one life, it's all worth it.

Had he survived his birth, he'd have been 3 months old today. As a result, I'm completely numb and probably won't be posting much over the next week or two. Just in case anyone thought it was going to be another 3 year sabbatical for me.

When does life begin? Scientifically, we can answer this question with a set of straightforward scientific facts:

Every living organism on earth has a DNA sequence, which varies by species. Tiger DNA is not the same as Giraffe DNA. There are some species that can make sterile hybrid offspring (Ligers, Tigons, Mules) due to similarity in the DNA, but the DNA of each parent species is not an exact match.

Therefore, there exists a DNA sequence that is uniquely human.

When determining whether a particular cell, or cells, are alive, we can observe one or more of the following phenomenon -- mitosis (cellular division where the DNA is duplicated), cellular respiration, as a result of osmosis or photosynthesis, etc. We can clearly observe and define life in these parameters.

At the time of conception, shortly after the sperm cell penetrates the egg cell, we can observe mitosis and cellular respiration. It is clear that at a biological level, this new organism is unquestionably alive.

This new organism also has a complete human DNA sequence, which means it is unquestionably, biologically, a human life.

Because of these Scientific Facts (in fact, you could even say "The Science is Settled") Human Life begins at conception, with each new person having the potential to develop into an adult organism.

The abortophile will often question this with, "Well, what about miscarriages? See, even God performs abortions so it should be legal!"

This argument does not hold up to a logical analysis. Sometimes, the process of human reproduction fails and the result is a miscarriage, or premature still birth. Some times, there is no explanation for a in-utero death. The reality is, people of all ages die every day of natural causes. Applied to it's logical conclusion, this argument can also be used to say murder should be legal, because all people are going to die anyway. Clearly, this is incorrect, and as a result, using miscarriages to defend abortion falls flat.

Referring to the unborn child as "pregnancy tissue" or "fetus" or "not really a baby" is also deliberately misleading by abortophiles. My second son was born too early, and died as a result. There was no question at all, just by looking at him, anyone could tell that this was unquestionably a tiny little boy.

The next argument made by pro-abortionists is often the fact that the unborn child is dependent on the mother for survival; that it is just a parasite. This is another weak argument, as no one disputes that a tapeworm is alive. While an unborn child does meet the biological definition of a parasite, this does not mean the unborn child is not alive, nor does it mean the child is not human. Furthermore, the average 6 month old is also dependent on the mother for care, and this is not unique amongst humans. Young being dependent on parents is a common trait amongst mammals and some other groups as well - birds, for example, care for their young. Furthermore, some Democrats consider people to be dependent children up to age 26.

Therefore, the only logical conclusion is that abortion is the ending of a human life through non-natural means. It is killing a person (and in the case of the mother, wounding her as well). This ending of an innocent life can not be justified in cases of rape or incest, as the child had no control over it's creation, and does not deserve a death sentence for being conceived under horrible circumstances.

From a medical ethics perspective, the only time an abortion can be justified is when the life of the mother is at risk. The reality of this situation is that BOTH lives are at risk, and the goal is to save the lives you can â" in this case, the mother's life -- because if the mother's life ends, the child's life does as well. Any other case -- there is no moral, medical, ethical, or any other reason to justify abortion. It is not a "medical procedure", it is a crime that when carried out successfully leaves 1 human life dead and the mother wounded.

So a question that often comes up in numerous gun forums is: What caliber bullet is the best?

Short Answer: The one you can handle the best -- where you have an accurate grouping -- plus, any gun is better than no gun if you find yourself in a situation where you need it.

Long Answer: The one rule of Hand Guns is that "stopping power" is largely a myth. Bad guys are stopped one of two ways - hitting a critical organ (heart, brain, spinal cord), which in the case of the heart could still give the attacker as much as 30 seconds of fight left in them -- or, puncturing enough holes so the attacker bleeds out and passes out from loss of blood pressure.

Compared to rifles and shotguns, all hand guns suck.

But since you can't conceal an AR-15, here's my opinion on some of the various handgun calibers and why I would or wouldn't recommend them for self defense / concealed carry.

First -- just forget about .50 Cal or .44 Magnum. You're not going to find a small frame gun to conceal chambered for these rounds. (No matter how awesome they may be.)

Second -- no matter what caliber, do not carry FMJ (Full Metal Jacket) rounds. In a number of states, Texas included, you are responsible for the round. If it goes all the way through a bad guy and hits an innocent person, you're on the hook. For self-defense, you want a round that's going to hit the bad guy, expand, and stay in them causing as much damage as possible. So buy and carry some form of expanding round. Remington Golden Sabre Hollowpoints are good, so are Federal Hydra-Shoks and Hornady Critical Defense rounds.

Now one to some of the more popular rounds.

.45 ACP -- This is what I carry in my everyday carry gun (a Springfield XDS). I am physically strong enough to more than handle the gun, and the .45 ACP is a heavy, slow round (compared to the 9mm and .40 S & W) but leads the pack in FBI statistics in "one shot stops". For a handgun round, the .45 ACP is a pretty devastating round. However... the recoil can be a bit much, and if you aren't strong enough to reliably control the gun, it's not for you. If you can, .45 is the way to go.

.40 S & W: Sometimes called the .40 slow and weak when compared to it's 10mm sibling, the .40 caliber round is also an effective round. The recoil tends to be a little sharper in pulling up as opposed to the .45 (where the recoil is more of a back push) but some people can handle the .40 better than the .45. It's a good choice.

9mm: The 9mm round is often denigrated, but the fact is I used to carry a 9mm as my everyday carry until I bought my concealable .45. The 9mm is smaller, but faster, than the .45 and the .40, and carrying a hollowpoint round here is even more critical. However, 9mm often takes 2 shots to stop, so if you're going to carry a 9mm (or any other gun, really) practice is very, very important. Double-Tap!

That's it. That's the, uh, unholy trinity of hand gun rounds that I'd recommend.

The rest are too small in my opinion. And no, I especially recommend against a .357 magnum -- it's a small bullet (even smaller than the roughly .38 9mm round) and much, much faster. Even with an expanding round I think the risk of the bullet passing through the target and wreaking havoc on innocents is too great. .380 ACP, .38 Special, .22 -- better than nothing, but unless you hit a vital organ you might just piss the person off.

Home defense? IF you can handle the recoil, get a shotgun. Otherwise, or if you're married, the AR-15 is an excellent choice. Or even better -- get both! I have one of each, as my wife is not physically strong enough to reliably handle the 12 gauge boomstick. The AR-15 on the other hand, has very little recoil (part of why they're so popular) and most women can easily handle it. Plus, most magazines are 30 round capacity (and MagPuls are awesome). The AR-15, despite the claims of our mentally retarded Vice President, is EASIER, not harder, to handle than a shotgun.

For the AR-15, you can buy expanding rounds, typically both Hollowpoint and Softpoint (especially in .223 Remington - but be careful here. If your rifle is not rated for the 5.56x45 NATO rounds, DON'T USE THEM IN YOUR RIFLE. However, if your rifle is rated for 5.56 NATO (like mine is) you can use either 5.56x45 or .223 Remington. The 5.56 round is same bullet, but the 5.56 NATO variety has a lot more powder behind it, meaning a much faster muzzle velocity. For the shotgun -- double-aught buckshot, and maybe for the last one load it with a 1 oz slug. Though be sure of what you're shooting at, that slug may pass through your brick and your neighbor's brick.

Finally -- always aim for center mass. Unless the bad guy has body armor, headshots are stupid. And if you think you can "shoot the gun out of the bad guy's hands"... well, the gene pool is better off without you in it.

Found a special, for $59 you can get 120 rounds of 5.56x45 NATO, 55 grain FMJ-BT, with a plastic ammo can.

Finally. 1000 rounds cost me $600 earlier, but then again, I also picked up 68 grain green tipped NATO FMJ rounds, so I bought something slightly different. (My AR-15 will obviously handle both with no problem. I prefer a heavier bullet, more momentum usually means more penetration depth.)

For you non-ballistics guys and gals: Grain represents the bullet weight - a lighter bullet will have more range, but will pack less punch when it reaches the target. BT = Boat Tail, which also adds some additional range and in-flight stability. The 5.56 bullet is so lethal because it tends to yaw and fragment once it hits tissue (or ballistics gel) and the path of the bullet because very unpredictable (more predictable in a consistent gel, but far less predictable in a Boar).

Cheaper bullet prices = more range time for me. A day at the range is always a good day.