So is she just a hotter version of her?

At least, that is what the headline would read if this news article was spun the same way by the "mainstream news" as the one that generated the line that causes conservatives to cream their shorts endlessly about Obama suggesting "57 states":

Would the Kevlar Kandidate do better by only going after electoral votes from 30 states - particularly when 28 of them have worse average ACT scores than his? As I mentioned in a comment elsewhere, I don't expect him to last long regardless.

Yep, it's official, Kevlar for President. He already has had the ear of the Koch Brothers and Sheldon Adelstein. He's been spending a lot of time in Iowa and New Hampshire, and he looks oh, so good on camera.

Though he did decide to go rogue - only slightly, as he would - by waiting a little later into the campaign cycle to formally declare candidacy than his friend Teflon Tim did back in 2011. Unlike the Teflon Candidate, though, The Kevlar Kandidate has much higher name recognition and could afford to come in a little later. Now the problem he has is in taking his name recognition and building it into something useful, as he is surrounded by other candidates who are proposing the same policies.

Stipulate that
- There Is Nothing To See Here, Move Along, and
- Nuremberg Defense, and
- Conservatives Are Just Lightweight Metallic Headwear Aficionados, and
- If The Tea Parties Hadn't Worn That Short Skirt To The Bar Where The Violent Illegal Alien Was Cleaning The Federal Agent's Hog-Leg, The Tea Party Probably Wouldn't Have Been Ventilated.
Those zany conservatives. Always going for the victim narrative.

America's Bitter Pill: Money, Politics, Backroom Deals, and the Fight to Fix Our Broken Healthcare System

Conservatives won't like it because it supports the thesis I have been repeating for some time - that the republicans voted against the ACA not because they disliked the contents but because they didn't want Obama to get the credit for a health care reform bill.

Liberals won't like it because it shows how the ACA is just the next offspring of a long lineage of conservative bills that line the pockets of big businesses in the guise of improving health care.

Slashdot "libertarians" won't like it because it isn't a youtube video of Ron Paul

Smitty won't like it because I posted a link to it :)

Since slashdot is slashdotting my slashdot account with random logouts.

I'm reading Java: A Beginner's Guide by Herbert Schildt. Schildt really is good. The lessons are smooth, with small complete examples of everything, explanations, and learning in steps, that is, each chapter builds on what was learned in the past. It's not just a bunch of concepts thrown together.. Here's one case where the O'reilly book just didn't do the job. It was good, but not for learning (reviewing, perhaps.)

I'm typing in every example, skipping the comments though. Also, changing names when they use plurals. An array should be named num, not nums, because each member is an instance of a num. It acts as a collections of nums, but it is not what it is. It's the J/P thing again. In databases, which is J territory, it should clearly be singular. Each record is an instance of the singular object (table.) And, people who think of tables in the plural often come up with terrible deigns and write horrible queries. Their using the database to support a specific process (which always changes, anyway) and not to hold data. They never learn. But i digress. Programs are about getting something done, so, it is more likely it should be named in the plural. I guess i'm in the wrong here. Though, as my code is for me (as opposed to if i was on a team), i'm going to follow my own preference.

In the Self Test for Chapter 6, question 6 is: Write a recursive method that displays the contents of a string backwards. I hit a mental block with that yesterday and just couldn't get it right. I was amazed (read: horrified) that such a small thing could be so hard. I ought to be able to (know what i need to do to) write that in seconds. After some fumbling over char vs String, it was time to go home. Today i approached the code and fixed it in just a few minutes.

class test06
{
  static String backward(String a)
  {
    if(a.length() == 1) return a;

    return a.substring(a.length() - 1) + backward(a.substring(0, a.length() - 1));
  }

  public static void main(String arg[])
  {
    System.out.println(backward("abcdef"));
  }
}

When i first got the question, i misunderstood it. I saw his answer and realized i misread it, so i tried this. Compared to his answer, he cheats. He used .charAt() to print out one char at a time from within the method. Granted, the book does that at this point, but this one is truer. And, i need something to be proud about.

But why did it take me so long? At first, i assumed its because i'm not used to Java, recursion is silly in this case, and i don't usually do recursion. But that's not true. I had a problem conceptualizing it, its effective, and i do it occasionally in SQL. But there's the answer. I do it in SQL.

Recursive CTEs are a pain. While more versatile than Oracle's hierarchical queries (which have a number of their own benefits), they are also confusing to learn. At some point it clicks though, and then its just a matter of keeping things straight in your head. However, in SQL's recursion the inner most level is also the final level. Outside of SQL, the opposite is true.

It's convenient to have blame it on SQL, though i know it's not true. Embarrassing as it is, i hit a mental block on the concept. Nonetheless, SQL likely had something to do with my confusion. I love these "easy" tests.

I have a Select Statement that returns 4 rows. When used in a stored procedure as input to an Insert Into, though, it was returning five rows. I commented out SET NOCOUNT ON; which is added by the SQL 2014 template. It then returned 4 rows. To test that was what was really going on, I uncommented out SET NOCOUNT ON; and it is now returning 4 rows properly.

I made no other changes.

Anybody else ever run into anything like this??

Why do i hate Java? (And C too.) retardedNames, case sensitivity, offsets treated like indexes. These are examples of where programmers had good ideas but then unfortunately designed them into a language.

0 is not a number. A number represents a quantity and 0 is not a quantity. You don't declare an array less one because 0 is a number. However, it is treated as a number for convenience. Why then refer to an index in an array with 0 first? Okay, okay, i know. It's because the variable is just a pointer, and the index is really an offset. So then why use an offset to index an array? Seriously. In how many cases do you treat the offset as an index. And in how many do you treat it like an offset? I thought so.

Then there's the whole = vs ==. Debate over whether = should set or compare is understandable. Personally, i would never have used = to set, because most people use it to demonstrate equality. Not to test it, but to demonstrate it. As in any math equation we teach children. With that in mind, i would think it was more likely to be used to test equality rather than set it. Furthermore, pick the odd operator out: =, +=, -=, *=, /=. ^=. Yeah, yeah, those are for convenience. But how many times have you mistaken the double-character operator for anything else. Yes, but they have another operator that makes it obvious. Exactly. Isn't == obviously setting without an operation. x += y adds y to x then sets. x -= y subtracts y from x then sets. So, x == y should equal y to x then set. Slightly bumpy because it sets x to y and not vice versa, but its really easy to understand. And, earlier languages did it with :=. Same thing.

BASIC used = for both. Noone used LET outside of teaching. Regardless, context defined it anyway. Context is not available in Java because it allows you do do nifty things like increment an array offset while setting it. So, no context. Of course, this leads to bugs and the niftiness is often considered bad practice, but isn't it cool that we can do it?

I've seen absolute morons coding in BASIC. But never once had i seen them use = to do what they didn't intend. You know why? Because its impossible! Context rules. On the same note, i've read about talented programmers who made the mistake in C(++).

Prefix and postfix ++ and -- are a little different. They are not obvious (until you know what they do), and other than errors in logic, they are used as intended. They break context, per se, but that is what they are designed to do. Applying this to the poor = sign is just plain ridiculous.

Seriously, why are these things done when they are counterintuitive, prone to bugs, and bad practice? Were the designers brain dead, or just 31337 h4x0rz that hadn't grown up yet? Or, is everyone so blind to this because they never made this mistake.

Okay, the languages weren't designed inasmuch as they just ended up being used. But why? Was it because the pros outweighed the cons? Or was it because programmers actually like this nonsense?

One step closer to the replicator.

Remember the motorized retracting radio antenna option that some cars had back in the 70's/80's? Well I want something like that, only on the driver's side of the car. And I want it to be a pipe with an elbow that can be raised like a submarine periscope. Only instead of lenses, I want it to be hollow. And instead of being an air intake like those snorkels on Hummers and Jeeps, I want it to be connected to the exhaust system and have a valve that can be actuated from a control in the cabin.

This way when I'm stopped at a traffic light, and next to me on my left is a big-ass truck jacked up off the ground with its "tailpipe" aimed right at my driver side window, smogging me out, I can flip a switch and return the favor and redirect my noxious emissions into one of *his* windows. (Or even better, a rubber hose that can be extended out from the car sideways to slip over the offender's tail^Wsidepipe, and reroute their own exhaust back at them!)

p.s. Speaking of automotive "why is this shit even legal?", how come motorcycles don't have to have mufflers? I have to notice one coming up on me and quick stick a finger in the appropriate ear so that blood doesn't shoot out of it when the guy roars by. I can be just about to fall asleep and one will go by on the main street down the block from me.

So I guess I also could use a 125 dB loudspeaker, which is just the threshold of pain but no real damage, on a turret on the car's roof, that automatically tracks an above-average loud noisemaking object, and when in range delivers a massive sound pulse of this.

A polar bear
Eats a bowler pair.
Into the Arctic he falls.
His dying wish,
As he passes a fish:
"Have better luck with my balls."

Then again, this could show up on the test:
http://www.futilitycloset.com/2015/06/28/made-to-order-4/

Taking a breather from Amazon Web Services study.
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=7644157&cid=50043823

We need something done tomorrow. We're off tomorrow. The Asia/Pacific (AP) team is in tomorrow. So, need it done tomorrow? There's an AP (app) for that.

Well, it was funny when i thought of it...