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Showing posts from December, 2018

My review of Practical C++ Design...

is nearing completion . Comments welcomed!

“Agnostic” apps?

<a href=“ https://12factor.net/config ”>Here</a> we find:  “ and unlike custom config files, or other config mechanisms such as Java System Properties, they are a language- and OS-agnostic standard.” Programmers are prone to grab words from fields where their knowledge is shaky and apply them to software engineering. An!example I have mentioned before is “technical debt,” where what is really being discussed is not debt, but a failure to maintain one’s capital stock. I have regularly seen the term “agnostic“ similarly misused. Strictly speaking, “agnostic“ about languages in operating systems what to mean that one believes what language or OS is in use is “unknown or unknowable” (Wikipedia entry on agnosticism). But that’s not what the person writing the above quote means. They mean that this part of the system should be indifferent to what language or OS the system is using, not that these facts are unknowable! PS: My apologies for the lousy link display at the start of t

Taxation: Not Theft

At least not according to scripture: 'Even tax collectors came to be baptized. “Teacher,” they asked, “what should we do?' '“Collect no more than you are authorized,” [John] answered.' -- Luke, 3:13 Nowhere in scripture, that I'm aware of, does a prophet advise listeners to commit just an authorized amount of adultery, or worship false gods just so far as the state asks them to.

Ferris Wheel as Escape Vehicle

I saw a movie in which Wesley Snipes used a ferris wheel as his getaway vehicle. 

Critics of Enlightenment Rationalism...

has been accepted for publication by Palgrave, and should be out within the year. Here is the project website : comments welcomed!

Atheist Aristotelians?

"the overall life of the polis... itself has to be understood... as existing for the sake of that in human beings which links them to the divine" -- Alasdair MacIntyre, p. 142 Just so: Aristotle's philosophy is oriented upwards: the physical is important as the basis for the living, the living as the basis for the conscious, the conscious as the basis for the moral and political, and those as supporting our connection to God. So encountering someone like Rand, who claims to be a follower of Aristotle, except for that God stuff, is like meeting someone who says they love modern chemistry, "except for the bits about atomic theory," or is a fan of evolutionary theory, "except for the idea of natural selection."