Installing Ruby 1.9.2

wget ftp://ftp.ruby-lang.org//pub/ruby/1.9/ruby-1.9.2-p0.tar.gz
tar -xzf ruby-1.9.2-p0.tar.gz
pushd .
cd ruby-1.9.2.p0
./configure \
--prefix=/usr/local \
--with-arch=x86_64 \
--program-suffix=19 \
--enable-shared
make
sudo make install
popd

Why Grails sucks

Or,
Why Grails is the worst web application framework I have ever used in my life, and I've used some pretty bad ones

Here's one reason:

Compilation error: Compilation Failed
Application context shutting down...
Application context shutdown.

Soooo sorry, but that's nothing but 100% grade-A pure American male cow manure.

Lykke Li - Get Some

Lykke Li's two new tracks from her SP Get Some are as good two pop songs as any that I've heard lately.


The track "Get Some" is certainly not for those with particular sensibilities, given its subject matter. But prurience and a good beat have always been a sure hit in the music biz, and I can't imagine this single will be any exception. This track is simply a guileless promise of sex to an unnamed lover.

As if to perfectly balance the album like a coin on its edge, "Paris Blue" is a lovelorn missive to an ex-lover. Poignant, haunted, and self-deprecating.

If you have an e-mail address, you can download the two tracks for free at the Lykke Li official website.

[ YouTube - Get Some ]

The Koch Brothers - Sociopathic Lying Murderers

The Koch brothers have been in the news lately for...

1. Being discovered as a major source of funding for tea party activist groups who had been portraying themselves as independent grassroots organizations.
2. In March of this year, Greenpeace published a report on Koch Industries and the significant and secretive financial role that they have had in the conspiratorial disinformation campaign and industry-exclusive denial of anthropogenic climate change.

A spokesperson for Koch Industries responded to the Greenpeace report. The Koch Industries response includes claims that the Greenpeace report "distorts the environmental record of [their] companies" and that they "have put tremendous energy into achieving sound environmental stewardship".

Here are just two examples that damningly contradict such statements. The safety and environmental record of Koch Industries could not be more clear.

From a January, 2000 report:

Koch Industries, Inc. unlawfully allowed some 3 million gallons of crude oil and related products to leak from its pipelines into ponds, lakes, rivers and streams, or onto adjacent shorelines, from 1990 to 1997.

Koch will pay the largest civil fine ever imposed on a company under any federal environmental law to resolve claims related to more than 300 oil spills from its pipelines and oil facilities in six states, the Justice Department and the U.S. EPA announced.

Source: The US Department of Justice

Koch Industries has also been found responsible for the deaths of two Texas residents.

In 1996, a pipeline managed by Koch Pipeline Company, LP (Koch) ruptured and leaked a butane vapor cloud into the surrounding residential area in the city of Lively, Texas. A teen-age boy and girl driving through in their pickup trunk were burned to death when the cloud ignited.

Source: The National Transportation Safety Board
Source: Serasota Herald-Tribune

On April 14, 2010 a spokesperson for Koch Companies Public Sector sent out an e-mail to a number of news organizations that preemptively and specifically denied any link to tea party activists, or foundations that provide them funding:

Because you have covered tea parties in the past and we imagine you will cover tomorrow's Tax Day Tea Party in DC, we want to reiterate some important facts.

Koch companies value free speech and believe it is good to have more Americans engaged in key policy issues. That said, Koch companies, the Koch foundations, Charles Koch and David Koch have no ties to and have never given money to FreedomWorks. In addition, no funding has been provided by Koch companies, the Koch foundations, Charles Koch or David Koch specifically to support the tea parties.

Thanks for your consideration.

Source: Talking Points Memo

On July 25, 2010, New York Magazine published this article about the Koch brothers that completely contradicts such denials. In the New York Magazine article David Koch is quoted as saying, "I’ve never been to a tea-party event." And yet here he is speaking at a fundraiser event for the Americans for Prosperity Foundation that was attended primarily by the members of tea party activist groups. The video clip is from a recent documentary called (Astro) Turf Wars that exposes how supposedly "grassroots" political organizations have over the years been funded by big-business billionaires such as Charles and David Koch.

Then, on August 30, 2010, the New Yorker printed this article detailing how the Koch brothers have directly supported and bankrolled tea party activists through a chain of foundations and institutions. The Americans for Prosperity Foundation has been created by the Koch brothers for the sole purpose of secretly providing funding for the promotion of their self-professed Libertarian political agenda through the Heartland Institute which directly funds tea party activists.

The Heartland Institute insists that it is independent, and is not affiliated with any political party or business. And yet, on the very same website on which they make such denials, the Heartland Institute has a web page dedicated to talking points specifically for Republican tea party activists.

In the past, the Heartland Institute has worked with Big Tobacco to conduct disinformation campaigns about the damaging health effects of smoking. In the 1990s the group worked with the tobacco company Philip Morris to question the science linking secondhand smoke to health risks. Of course the official response from the Heartland Institute is to deny this too, in a patently similar fashion to the "set the record straight"-style of Koch Industries. Obviously, they are fully aware that the court of public opinion has ruled against Big Tobacco.

Koch Industries official website has a page dedicated to "setting the record straight" and combating the inevitable public perception that they are a criminal corporate citizen. There you will find paragraphs of double-talk and a narrative that makes no mention of the people it has injured and killed. It lists legitimate environmental organizations with whom it has affiliated itself and contributed to, but neglects to mention that such contribution was a court-ordered $15 million compensation stipulation as part of their settlement with the Justice Department.

Charles and David Koch are killing people, lying about it; destroying the environment, lying about it; and funding political organizations that promote legislation that allows them to do so, and lying about it. All while keeping a straight aristocratic face.

This behavior can only be described as sociopathy.

The Koch brothers will tell you that they have worked hard for their station in life. Perhaps. They inherited their wealth and ownership of their company from their father. Still, they must have worked very hard at staying out of prison, being the sociopathic, lying murderers that they are.

America, meet Karen Handel

This woman will be the next governor of Georgia.

Okay Mrs. Handel, we get it. You're a bad ass.

Ladies and gentlemen, the likes of these will be our elected officials. How does this image make you feel? Does it make you feel a little uneasy? Maybe it makes you feel secure and in charge, knowing that a strong white woman with an assault weapon is gonna be in charge of things. Aww.

Yep, she can carry that thing around with her wherever she wants. It's Georgia.

Update: The Vanity Fair article to which I link in this article is outdated as of August 2010. Nathan Deal faced Karen Handel (who had already resigned as Secretary of State of Georgia) in a tightly contested August 10, 2010 Republican gubernatorial candidate primary and won by fewer than 2500 votes. The following day Handel declined to pursue a recount and conceded. In recent polling, Nathan Deal holds a 10-point lead over Democrat Roy Barnes in Georgia's gubernatorial race.

Tax dollars by caucus

When the Tea Party-augmented Republican party takes over the House and the Senate this November, I think the Dems will have to take from the experience the following lessons:

1. Don't piss off folks living in rural America...
   1. by levying Federal taxes on rural America,
   2. and calling them uneducated rural Americans.
2. Stop subsidizing rural America with Federal tax dollars and just let the residents of the rural states live with indigence and the neglect of public services. One of two things will happen:
   1. Either they will fulfill libertarian expectations by
      1. independently replacing public services with private ones and
      2. somehow surviving the depression of their agriculture-based economy free from Federal subsidy
   2. or they will continue to live in indigence until they revolt or die.
3. Meanwhile, if Federal taxes are eliminated (LOL), then Democratic states can modestly increase their own state income taxes to replace their own relatively modest Federal subsidies, and to cover their state budget deficits.

Surely those are the lessons that should be learned from this tax infomap at infographic.com:

Source: Tax dollars by caucus

So, Tulsas of America, go ahead and keep on whining about your taxes. You will just be cut off from the Federal teat.

Remember the 2008 election? Just two years ago? This map reveals the dramatic difference in rural and metropolitan political leanings in that election:

Source: NY Times (click "County leaders")

Does it not beg the question: Why are metropolitan areas so much more better off than rural areas in terms of income and welfare, and why are they also more democratic? Are those two things somehow related?

Testing snipt.org embed, and javascript Array prototypical extension

Does this embed properly? With cool css syntax coloring?

From Extending JavaScript Arrays by "pradeep"

Even a broken clock...

Until today there has been absolutely nothing that Glenn Beck has said that I did not wish I had never heard in the first place. His rhetoric is usually so inflammatory and stupid that it is impossible to escape it from either the reverent right or the lampooning left.

Surely you've heard about the plan hatched by Pastor Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach Center church in Gainesville, Florida to hold a good old-fashioned down home book-burning of exclusively the Islamic holy book the Quran on September 11th.

Apparently so has Mr. Beck, and he weighed in with his opinion in this blog post.

What is wrong with us? It’s just like the Ground Zero mosque plan. Does this church have the right? Yes. Should they? No. And not because of the potential backlash or violence.

Update: Okay, no. The mosque is not being planned to be built on Ground Zero, for one thing. If it was, that might be a little weird. Calling it the "Ground Zero mosque" is just a straight up lie.

And besides, burning the Quran, and building a mosque two-blocks north of Ground Zero are not the same things at all.

But go on...

We must be the better person. We must be bigger than our problems. Bigger than the times in which we live. Burning the Koran is like burning the flag or the Bible. You can do it, but whose heart will you change by doing it? You will only harden the hearts of those who could be moved. None of those who are thinking about killing us will be affected, but our good Muslim friends and neighbors will be saddened. It makes the battle that they face inside their own communities even harder.

What?

This sounds measured and calm. It sounds well-reasoned. It actually sounds rather Christian in the idealistic turn-the-other-cheek sense of the word.

Well (almost) good for you Mr. Beck. You (almost) got one right this time.